


and my heart's already sinned

by twilightstargazer



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Sexual Content, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:55:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24114619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightstargazer/pseuds/twilightstargazer
Summary: Bellamy is nineteen when he begins to fall out of love with his soulmate. When the mark begins to press hard into his ribs, puncturing his lungs, and leaving him feeling as though he’s drowning. When his mother starts disappearing days at a time, becoming more of a shell than a person. When his sister complains loudly how stupid the concept is, even as she silently searches her own skin for marks.He's nineteen when he realises that that’s all soulmates are good for, pain and suffering and an endless whirlpool of hurt.-or, Bellamy shouldn't want to sleep with his sister's new roommate, but there's just something so damn intriguing about Clarke.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 114
Kudos: 653





	and my heart's already sinned

**Author's Note:**

> This absolute monster of a fic is brought to you by Beliza. Beliza, the only true pair of soulmates to exist.
> 
> Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who helped me out with fic. There's Meg who read the first 14k of it to assure me that it wasn't garbage, Meha who helped me out with the ending when I got stuck, Medha who urged me to actually continue this fic (which was started back in 2017, supposed to just be 5k but grew into this monster) and to everyone who had to put up with my constant snaps and messages about how much I hate writing. This is fic is yours because without y'all it probably would have remained in my drafts forever.
> 
> tw for one line about self harm in the early part of the fic

Bellamy is fifteen when he gets his soulmark.

It’s a riot of colour bleeding onto his skin-- deep pinks, dark greens, rich blues-- and crisp, clean lines. It lies on his rib cage, no bigger than the size of his fist, a cluster of cherry blossoms and frangipanis and dahlias, just like the ones he painstakingly helped his mother plant in front of their house when he was seven, the ones he tends to and takes care of every spring.

His heart twists when he first catches sight of it in his shitty bathroom mirror, and when he brushes his fingers across it, so gently because he’s afraid it might disappear before his very eyes, his hands tremble.

He’s read about them, soulmates, knows that while they’re not rare, they are far and few between.

He’s read the stories and the science, but the things that grip him the most are the myths. The stories of creatures with two hearts and a shared soul, creatures that scared Zeus so much he cleaved them in half, leaving each pair wanting, gasping, crying in pain. He’s read the myths, knows of the wars waged and won because of that bond, knows that when someone can harness that kind of power, soulmates would raze the earth just to get back to each other, leaving it smoldering in their wake.

Soulmates are power and self destruction rolled up into one, and as his fingers ghosts across the mark once again, he can’t believe the universe has given him this gift.

* * *

As he gets older, it becomes more of a curse than a blessing.

Soulmates aren’t a perfect solution for a problem. In fact, they might be the problem.

His sister experiences heartbreak for the first time when her boyfriend gets a soulmark, dropping her like a hot potato to pursue it. She spends the night curled into him, sniffling, while they slowly go through a box of VHS Disney tapes. When she says the word ‘soulmate’, it’s bitter and harsh, with thorn coated edges. 

It’s the start of his mother’s downward spiral, getting involved in an affair with her soulmate, a married man almost a decade older than her. She halfheartedly tries to leave, but he pays well, well enough that they can keep the heat on during the winter and replace their threadbare clothes that have holes and torn edges.

Still, he can’t pretend not to see the bruises on her arms and legs, the bags under her eyes that come with the sleepless nights, the way she seems to collapse in on herself like a dying star.

“Why can’t you just stop?” he hisses when she stumbles home one night, reeking of sweat and alcohol while he looks through financial aid packages online.

“Because we’re nothing without him,” she says easily, slumping into a chair.

Anger bubbles hot and bitter in his chest. “If this is about money--” he starts. He has a job, and he’s planning on delaying college for a few years so he can save up. He can delay a little longer if his family needs it more.

“It’s not about money,” she snaps, and she’s not looking at him, but rather the tiny galaxy printed on her forearm. 

His anger melts into something else that leaves his stomach churning uncomfortably, and he feels his soulmark itch under his threadbare shirt.

“Fine,” he manages to say at last, grabbing his things. He can’t sit there much longer without feeling ill. “I’m going to bed.”

Bellamy is nineteen when he begins to fall out of love with his soulmate, when the mark begins to press hard into his ribs, puncturing his lungs, and leaving him feeling as though he’s drowning.

It hurts him when his mother starts disappearing days at a time, becoming more of a shell than a person.

It hurts him when his sister complains loudly how stupid the concept is, even as she silently searches her own skin for marks.

It hurts him when he realises that that’s all soulmates are good for, pain and suffering and an endless whirlpool of  _ hurt _ .

* * *

Bellamy is twenty-one when he gets his first tattoo.

It leaves his skin raw and stinging, the harsh black lines of an ouroboros on his forearm. He wants it to be a giant ‘fuck you’ to the universe.

He’s twenty one with a tattoo and a dead mother. A mother who died because of her soulmate, one who left her without a word or forwarding address. One who didn’t even bother to show up when two weeks later, driven out of her mind in despair, she tried to slice off her mark clean with a razor blade in the bathtub.

(He was twenty-one planning a funeral, leaving what was left of her in a town none of them had ever loved.)

His sister is now in his charge, barely sixteen, and they end up moving to the city, into a cramped shoebox apartment where the windows always fog up when it rains. The elevator doesn’t work and the upstairs neighbours like to smoke weed and have ugly fights every fortnight, but the rent is cheap and there’s a fire escape overlooking the city, large enough for Octavia to set out a pot of daisies.

The cherry blossoms, and frangipanis, and dahlias were dead long before they left their tiny blue and white home.

He wishes the ones on his skin were too.

* * *

Some days are easier than others.

But most days it’s hard.

He gets a job at a bookshop two blocks away, and bartends a few nights a week. Octavia starts scooping ice cream a few days a week at the shop a block away from the bookshop. It’s not much, but it’s enough to keep them housed and clothed and fed, and that’s all that matters.

Bellamy learns to forget about his soulmate.

He gets more tattoos, hooks up with boys and girls alike, and tries his best to live in the moment even though his heart might be stuck in the past.

(“You’re such a nerd, Bell,” Octavia snorts when she catches sight of his newest addition, a quote from the Iliad wrapped around his bicep.

“Shut up,” he says, without much heat, and rumples her hair despite her protests, before getting started on dinner.)

Every so often, his fingers might ghost over it, tracing the fragile petals, but then he catches himself. He doesn’t need anyone besides his sister. He doesn’t want anyone either.

Still though, Octavia isn’t like him; she has a ticker bomb for a heart and wings ruthlessly torn out of her back. She doesn’t see herself living with her nerdy big brother forever, and when she gets ready to leave for college, she moves into the dorms without a second thought.

“I just need my own space, you know?” she shrugs, kissing him on the cheek before flouncing off.

“Yeah,” he replies a beat too late, and she’s too far to even hear it.

Bellamy goes back home to an empty apartment and realises that he’s actually alone for the first time in his life.

( _ No you’re not, _ his mark seems to say, _ I’m here too. _ )

( _ Go fuck a cactus _ , he thinks, and then spends the next hour playing video games to take his mind off things.)

Of course, things are always easier said than done.

She manages a full week before taking the late train back to the apartment, running into him right before he’s about to lock up and leave for the new bartending gig he’s got. This one is closer to his apartment than the last with less sleazy customers and a better salary too.

“O?” he asks, squinting at her, “What are you doing here?”

“I need to use the shower,” she huffs, hitching her backpack higher on her shoulder.

Bellamy blinks. “What’s wrong with the one at the dorms?”

“Everything!” she bursts, before launching on a five minute tirade about how there’s never any hot water, how her roommate is a bitch, and how the people running the dining hall were clearly white because they don’t season their chicken with anything other than salt and pepper.

“You’re white,” he points out mildly, and gets a glare in return.

“That’s besides the point,” she says, gritting her teeth. “The point is that it all sucks and I should have listened to you when you said I should just live at home.”

Bellamy sighs, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Well, as nice as that sentiment is, it’s a bit too late considering we already  _ paid  _ for it. Looks like you’re stuck there.”

She looks like she’s about to protest, but is stopped when he holds up a hand. “If you want, we can discuss it later, but right now I need to get to work. Your bed’s made up, and there’s some leftover Thai in the fridge. I’ll be home by three, okay?”

Octavia looks more than a little put out, crossing her arms and sulking as she mutters, “Fine,” but it’s better than he could have have hoped for so after pressing a kiss to the top of her head, he heads off to work.

They do have their discussion-- a very loud one-- the next day when he’s making them a late breakfast, and, after a fair amount of yelling, thinly veiled threats and crying, they manage to figure something out. She’s to stay in the dorms for now, but can spend weekends at home, and after the year’s up, Bellamy will help her look for apartments. It’s as good as it gets, but Octavia still isn’t 100% pleased, and she makes the fact known by sticking out her tongue and blowing a raspberry at him.

* * *

By the time the end of the school year finally rolls around, Octavia has transformed their living room into a real life Pinterest board. She’s cut photos out from old magazines that she took from the dentist’s office where she plays secretary a few hours during the week and has them all organised by room-- bathrooms with large soaking tubs, kitchens with marble countertops, bedrooms that have more pillows than necessary. She’s excited about it and Bellamy lets her be, biting his tongue to stop himself from telling her that there was no way they would afford any of that.

His sister’s head isn’t too far up in the clouds though, because most of the places they visit are, while ugly and not matching her  _ vision _ at all, within their price range. It’s all studios and roommates and there’s even a house with far too many people living under one roof in Bellamy's opinion. It seems like a fire hazard.

Still, none of them pique her interest and he finds himself going to see ten, fifteen, twenty apartments with her as the days go on.

Eventually he puts his foot down and tells her that she’s not going to look at more than thirty places. She takes it as a challenge.

It rains the day they’re supposed to see the thirtieth apartment.

Big, heavy drops that have him soaked to the bone in seconds. It’s times like these Bellamy regrets not having a car, but a car costs money that they don’t have, and besides, they live in the city. They never have to go far in the first place.

Octavia calls the girl and tells her that they’re running late because of the storm. Meanwhile Bellamy shakes himself off like a dog at the door before O throws a towel at him.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the adult here?” she asks, shrewd, and he just grins, draping the wet towel over her head and grinning when she sputters indignantly.

“Yeah,” he says, pulling his shirt over his head, “I am an adult, which means that I can do whatever the hell I want.”

“Shut up and put on a shirt,” she tells him with a roll of her eyes. “No one wants to see that.”

He tugs on her braid as he goes back to his room, dancing out of the way of her flying fist, his laughter echoing off of the thin walls as he goes.

They take the train into a nicer part of town and Bellamy is suspicious when Octavia tells him that this is their stop, the station overrun with people with expensive briefcases and handbags that probably cost over a year’s worth of rent. She pulls out her phone and starts walking in what he hopes is the direction of the apartment complex.

“How much is this girl charging you for rent again?” he asks, when they finally get there.The building looks new and it has an actual  _ doorman _ . It’s nice, too nice for someone like him and Octavia to afford.

“$500 a month plus groceries and utilities,” she says while furiously typing out a text message, the press-ons she’s wearing going  _ clack clack clack _ against the cracked screen of her phone.

“You sure there wasn’t an extra zero on that number?”

“Nope. I met with Clarke in person and that’s what she told me.”

“Wait you  _ met her _ ? When did this happen?”

“I have a life unlike you, Bell,” she tells him with a toss of her hair over her shoulder. She slips her phone into her back pocket before heading over to the doorman, pasting a charming smile on her face.

“It could have been  _ dangerous _ ,” he says, following after her, nodding at the man as he lets them inside.

Octavia rolls her eyes. “Well I’m not dead or kidnapped, so you can relax now. Aren’t you always telling me to act like an adult?”

“I tell you to act like an adult when you leave your shit lying all over the house,” he says flatly. “That’s not the same as going off on your own to meet a  _ stranger  _ about housing.”

“Oh relax Bell, Clarke’s not a crazy axe-wielding murderer. She’s perfectly fine and normal.” She punches the button for the fourth floor when they get into the elevator. “And we met at a  _ Starbucks _ . I’m bringing you with me to check out the place. I’m not  _ dumb _ .”

“Really? Because you honestly make me wonder sometimes,” he mutters under his breath, and she elbows him in the gut.

The elevator opens with a soft  _ ding! _ and Octavia leads him to a door with the number 319 emblazoned on it in brass. She only has to knock once before a small blonde is flinging open the door.

His first impression of Clarke is that she’s something of a mess.

There’s a smudge of paint under her jaw, blonde hair thrown up in a slipshod bun high on her head, and a too big Fleetwood Mac t shirt, all but hiding her shorts. There’s a tattoo on the inside of her wrist that immediately catches his eyes, as well as a hoop through the helix of her ear, and when she stands tall, she barely comes up to his chin.

She’s cute, in a sort of grungy way, and he finds his gaze lingering on the tattoos that stand out against her pale skin. There’s a minimalist interpretation of the  _ Starry Night _ on her left forearm and when she moves to brush her hair out of her face, he sees the flash of roman numerals on her right. It all just makes him intrigued, suddenly wanting to know more about this strange girl.

Her eyes barely flit over him before landing on Octavia, and a wide toothy grin stretches across her face.

“Hey Octavia, nice to see you again,” she says, holding out her hand for her to shake. There’s a splattering of cornflower blue paint dotting the back of her hand like freckles he notes, matching the smudge at her jaw.

“This is my brother Bellamy,” says Octavia, as she shakes her hand, “He’s here to make sure you don’t steal my kidneys.”

“ _ Octavia _ .”

Clarke zeroes in on him and smiles, sharklike and feral, as she gives him a cursory up-down that makes him feel as though he’s getting X-rayed. For some reason, his heart rate speeds up.

“Hearts go for more money on the black market,” she tells him, “Upwards of a million dollars. If I was going to steal an organ from her and sell it, it would be that one.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” he points out, and she smiles at him again. It’s dangerous, the easy way she’s able to pique his intrigue.

“Good,” she says before inviting them into her home.

The apartment is nice-- neat but lived in, lots of natural light with a balcony just off the living area, and Octavia actually squeals when she sees that she gets a bathroom all to herself. It’s much bigger than the shoebox they’ve gotten accustomed to living in, maybe almost three times the size, and her furniture isn’t mismatched like his. She has an actual proper kitchen, not a cramped broom closet that could barely hold a proper fridge and stove, but one with enough counter space and even a  _ dishwasher _ . There's a separate dining room and table, with actual seating unlike Bellamy’s round, scratched table top that has only two chairs and a couple barstools that he found at Goodwill.

She has a large tv and a shelf of books, mostly  _ Scientific American _ journals, on one wall, and a half dead fern by the other, the one that branches off into the bedrooms.

“See Bell,” Octavia says proudly once Clarke is finished giving them the tour, “No heads in the freezers or mysterious stains, and the neighbourhood is like, half as sketchy as our old one.”

“It’s alright,” he grudgingly admits, and he hears Clarke muffle a snort behind him.

“I’m afraid I don’t have much in terms of furniture for your bedroom,” she says a bit sheepishly . “I was using that room as a makeshift studio.”

“Where’d you move all your stuff to?” asks his sister.

“I wasn’t using the walk-in in my room so I set everything up in there,” she shrugs.

Octavia’s eyes widen comically. “You have a  _ walk-in closet _ ? And you’re not using it?”

“I don’t have that many clothes.”

He’s pretty sure that Octavia mutters something along the lines of ‘well I do’ under her breath, but then she flounces off to check out the empty bedroom once more, no doubt already thinking of how she could set up the room.

Once his sister is too distracted to hear, he turns to Clarke and asks, “So how much exactly is the rent?”

“$500 a month.”

He scoffs, “A place like this is at least five grand a month. No way you’re charging O that little.”

“Well I am.” She juts her chin out, glaring at him a little. “You got a problem with that?”

“I just want to know what my sister is getting herself into. She doesn’t need to fall for the tricks of some scam artist.”

“ _ Scam artist? _ ”

She actually sounds offended by the insinuation, which is hilarious because just a few minutes ago, he had accused her of being the next Jeffery Dahmer.

Bellamy doesn’t back down, just gives her a pointed look and crosses his arms over his chest. She glares balefully at him for a few seconds before sighing.

“My dad owned this place so I don’t actually have to pay rent. Just utilities, housekeeping and security which comes up to like $1200 a month,” she tells him, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt.

It was obvious from the moment he walked in that she was rich, from the keys to a fancy BMW carelessly strewn across the kitchen counter to the top of the line appliances and furniture in her space, but this was on another level. 

“So why do you even need a roommate?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at her.

Clarke shrugs. “My place is big, and I get lonely.”

It’s a simple answer and yet, it makes a dozen more questions sprout to life in his mind, each snippier than the last.

“Don’t have a lot of friends, do you princess?” he says, the nickname slipping out by accident, but he doesn’t regret it. It fits perfectly really, the way she’s locked up alone in her ivory tower. She has no one, he realises, looking at the walls. They’re covered in art but the lack of photos featuring any actual people in them is conspicuous. “Had to get a complete stranger to come live with you so you’d feel less alone.”

She stiffens for just a brief moment and then glares at him. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

He wants to say that yes, it is his business since his sister might be moving in and he doesn’t want her to have to deal with any weird, emotional baggage, but Octavia flounces back into the room, chattering away at a mile a minute and inadvertently stops him. She seems to have a sixth sense for when he’s going to start an argument. It’s uncanny.

“I absolutely  _ love _ it,” she tells Clarke, grabbing the other girl’s hands and twirling her around in a circle. A surprised laugh bubbles from between her lips, and her cheeks are dashed with pink. “When can I move in?”

“As soon as you want, I’m not super picky about it,” says Clarke, tucking a piece of hair back.

Octavia squeals again and starts going on about how she plans to decorate the room and where she’ll put her bed and did you know that all the natural light is perfect for taking selfies to up her Instagram game?

Bellamy’s earlier annoyance evaporates almost immediately as he watches his sister. She hasn’t been this happy in a long time, maybe not since before their mom died. He can’t help but let his lips curl into a small smile as he looks on. He’s glad she’s happy.

Octavia decides she wants to move into Clarke’s apartment by the time the semester is over, just maybe two weeks away. She has finals though, which means she tasks Bellamy with packing her stuff in neatly labelled boxes. She’s accumulated so much junk in the time that they’ve been living here. There are books strewn about the room, shoes that pose a tripping hazard on the floor, and a closet that’s bursting at the seams. 

The day her finals are finished she invites Clarke over for a celebratory dinner, as a sort of get to know you better kind of thing. Bellamy panics for a bit and worries about what she might think of the shithole that they live in. And then he panics even more about what to cook, even thinks about running out at the last minute to buy them steak since that’s what rich people like. Ultimately he settles on cooking chicken parm and making a pan of brownies for dessert because he’s good at that, and it’s Octavia’s favourite.

Clarke shows up when he’s about to pop the brownies in the oven, a bottle of fancy wine in tow. She’s wearing a pretty baby pink dress that makes her hair look like spun gold and he stares at her for a moment, wondering how he didn’t notice that she was gorgeous before.

“I didn’t want to show empty-handed,” she explains, sounding surprisingly self-conscious. She tucks a lock of her behind her ear and averts her gaze. Bellamy realises that he’s been staring.

He shakes himself out of it.

“No, this is fine,” he tells her, taking the bottle and putting it in the fridge so that it remains cool. He doesn’t tell her that he and Octavia aren’t huge wine drinkers, both of them preferring beer instead. But it’s a nice gesture from Clarke, so he makes a conscious effort to be nice to her in return.

Dinner is only a little bit awkward.

Octavia carries most of the conversation, telling Clarke about her job at the dentist’s office and her degree in communication. There are a few heavy pauses in between, because Clarke isn’t quite as talkative as Octavia, but she tells them about her job as a graphic designer, and what it was like growing up in D.C.

Bellamy doesn’t want to like her, but there’s something about the way she talks that warms him to her. Something about how she always looks so startled when she laughs and how she’s far more cunning and clever than he thought. He also learns that she’s maybe not quite the princess he initially thought she was when they met at the apartment, but there’s no way in  _ hell _ that he’d ever admit that. Or stop calling her Princess since she ends up sighing long sufferingly and rolling her eyes at him. It’s fun.

“Still haven’t scared you off as yet, princess?” he asks at the end of the night when they’re doing the dishes. Clarke insists on helping even though she’s the guest. It makes him warm to her even more.

She snorts and tosses her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t scare easily.”

“Well that’s good, because that one,” he jerks a thumb in Octavia’s direction, “Is a handful.”

Clarke smiles at him, and he finds himself smiling back despite his best efforts.

“I think I can handle it. It might be fun.”

“You say that now but when she calls you to ask for help with burying a body…”

“And you thought  _ I _ was the serial killer?” she teases him, “Maybe I should have been watching you two all along.”

He just grins wider, and Clarke flicks soapsuds at his face.

He’s not smiling a week later when he’s tasked with taking apart Octavia’s bed though. She has to move it to Clarke’s apartment. It would have been easier to just buy a new one and have it delivered to the new place. That’s what Octavia wanted to do, but then she realised just how  _ expensive _ bed frames and good mattresses were so she stopped harassing him about that and started harassing him about  _ this _ . Which means that now he’s here, halfway underneath the thing and sweating through his thin t-shirt because it’s summertime, and once again their AC isn’t working.

He swears when the screwdriver slips out of place and almost pierces his forefinger and there’s a muffled laugh from the doorway behind him.

“Laugh all you want, O,” he calls out as he tries to wriggle out from under the bed. “I don’t see you doing-- oh.”

What he expects to be his sister turns out to be  _ Clarke _ , and he’s all of a sudden conscious of the fact that he’s wearing a t-shirt with a hole under the arm and he’s all sweaty and can’t remember if he put deodorant on this morning or like, ever.

She grins up at him, sharp and amused, and Bellamy fights the urge to ruffle his hair.

“Octavia asked if I could load some of her stuff in my car,” she explains, stepping into the room. She looks so out of place standing in his shitty little apartment with her bright white sneakers and jean shorts that expose far too much leg for him to be comfortable. There’s a tattoo on her thigh, a cluster of wildflowers, and he’s decidedly  _ not  _ looking at it.

She’s wearing a tanktop too, black with a slinky neckline that dips towards her cleavage. It shows off the tiny solar system that follows the curve of her clavicle, small and delicate, and shit, he’s not looking at that either.

Bellamy swallows, trying to get his head right.

Clarke just smirks at him, deliberately tracing her eyes down his entire body, from the threadbare t-shirt to the tattoos on his arms, to his old grey sweatpants. If he had pearls, he’d be clutching them, the intensity of her gaze setting his skin ablaze.

“You’re in charge,” she says, shoving her hands in her pockets and leaning against the wall. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “Depends. You know how to take apart a bed frame?”

“No but I have broken a few,” she says innocently and he chokes on his tongue.

“Right. Uh, you can take the boxes I guess. O’s labelled them so whatever is in the living room is ready to go,” he says, turning away from her so she doesn’t see the slight flush to his skin. “Leave anything that’s too heavy and I’ll bring them down later.”

“I bet you can,” she hums, her eyes tracing appreciatively over the bulge of his biceps. His flush deepens.

Clarke skips out of the room, leaving Bellamy alone with his traitorous thoughts. He manages to go five minutes without thinking about her, thinking about all the pale, perfect skin on display, the way he wants to trace all of her tattoos first with his fingers and then with his lips.

He heads to the bathroom and washes his face, the cool water a boon to his overheated skin. He hopes it can also wash away his thoughts of her.

It’s slow going, but he eventually manages to disassemble Octavia’s bed. He gets the girls to help him lug the mattress down to the carpark where he’s borrowed Miller’s pickup for the day, and he sees how Clarke watches the flex of his biceps as he lifts and straps things in place.

She notices him watching her watch him and smiles that smile again, the sharklike, feral one that says she’s out for blood. His, specifically.

Then she pats him on the arm, squeezing the muscle lightly as she tells him, “Good job,” and it leaves him more scandalised than before.

It continues throughout the rest of the day, the looks and pointed comments, and around mid afternoon, he stops being scandalised long enough to give as good as he was getting.

When Clarke lets her gaze linger on the jut of his hip bone after his shirt rides up a bit, he makes sure to lean in a bit too close and tug on her hair. When she appears entranced by the flex of his biceps, he grabs onto her hips to steady her as she puts up the curtains, thumbs grazing the curve of it.

“Careful, Princess,” he murmurs, his thumb dipping just beneath her waistband to graze the dimples above her ass. 

She sucks in a breath.

It was a dangerous game to be playing with his sister’s new flatmate, and he’s sure that if Octavia was paying attention to them, she’d definitely have something to say. But as it was, his sister was still riding high on the rush of adrenaline and excitement of having her own space that she barely noticed anything else around her, much less the conspicuous flirting between him and Clarke.

“You might fall. Don’t want anything to happen to that pretty little face of yours, now do we?”

He continues to stroke Clarke’s skin, barely even applying any pressure, but it still makes her hands shake and cheeks flush.

He wants to see just how pink he can make her get. 

The pink of her skin, flushed with desire from all his teasing, and the gold of her hair, almost liquid in the way it sticks to her face. She’s gorgeous in a way he doesn’t know how to describe and Bellamy has a sudden want to know everything about her, to open her up and learn what makes her tick.

She manages to muster up some bravado and tosses her hair over her shoulder as she smirks at him. With more grace than he could have anticipated, she hops off the stepladder right into his bubble of space, toe to toe, chests almost touching.

She is close enough that he could smell her like this, the faint scent of something floral-- honeysuckle he’d realise later-- and sweat, close enough that he could see the slight dilation of her pupils as she regards him.

His hands still rest on her hips and they squeeze them lightly. Clarke hums, rocking forward on the balls of her feet.

“Can’t let that happen, now can we,” she says. 

“Definitely not,” he says solemnly. “It’s a very important part.”

“Not the  _ most  _ important part of me, I hope,” she teases, and just like that, it’s as though someone has lit a fire under his skin.

He smirks down at her. “Guess we’ll have to find out,” he tells her as he steps out of her space before he does something stupid, like kiss her.

“I guess so.”

He wants to know if  _ he _ makes her tick, if he’s on her mind the way she’s on his.

Bellamy’s only just met Clarke and yet there’s something about her that intrigues him, and he can’t figure out why. Something about her person that has him drawn to her, hooked in like nothing else he can explain.

* * *

The thing is, Bellamy does not  _ not _ want to fuck his sister’s roommate, which is a problem to say the least.

For one thing, despite the strange, almost immediate attraction between them, he doesn’t know Clarke all that well. He doesn’t know her likes and dislikes, her hobbies, or  _ anything _ really. All he knows is that she’s gorgeous and manages to get under his skin and make him  _ want _ .

The other, more important thing is that Clarke is Octavia’s roommate. Not only is she Octavia’s roommate, but she owns the place that they live in, the place that his sister loves and pays almost nothing for in rent, and he refuses to be the reason why that doesn’t work out, so he doesn’t do anything.

He doesn’t act on his feelings, doesn’t flirt with Clarke quite as much as he did on that first day, doesn’t let himself think about her.

He limits his visits to their place to just once a week, only a few hours on weekends, under the pretense of giving Octavia space. He keeps up correspondence through text and a passive aggressive tag war on Facebook, and his sister hasn’t said anything about it.

He starts hooking up with strangers again too.

It’s something he used to do before he fully centred his life on taking care of Octavia, a good distraction of sorts. It’s almost laughably easy to get people willing enough to sleep with him when he’s working at the bar, just as how it’s easy to ignore the flutter of pain that comes with his mark, an annoying reminder that there’s always a third, unwanted person in the room.

Still, he perseveres, having experience in ignoring that cursed thing. It’s easy to get people to notice him, a coy smile here, a bad joke there. He always goes back to their place, though not before making out with them at the side of the bar, hot and wet, a preview of what’s to come later. He goes to their place because then it’s easier for him to sneak out the next morning.

But, as much as he’s able to ignore it, it always sparks a conversation with whoever he’s with that night. Some of his hook-ups have soulmates of their own which makes the conversation easy, but most do not.

“I’ve never seen one in real life before,” says Bree, the girl he went home with that night. He saw her at the bar, blonde hair and pale skin and flirty eyes, and it didn’t take much to get them to where they are right now. “It’s almost as pretty as you,” she continues, tracing the mark with a finger and it sends a bolt of annoyance through him.

He wants to snap at her to leave it alone, that it doesn’t have anything to do with her, but instead, Bellamy takes a deep breath and leers at her as he parts her legs.

“I can think of a few things prettier than that,” he murmurs, leaning down to kiss her skin, heading to the junction between her thighs.

Bree’s giggles get caught on a moan when he finally gets to his destination, and that stops all the talks about soulmates.

The ache that permanently blooms on the side of his chest fades into the background, quieted by broken moans and mewls and gruff dirty promises that he whispers into her skin. It fades, replaced by something else that he can’t name until he has her on her hands knees in front of him, hair slipping through his fingers like streaks of gold.

He’s thinking about  _ her _ .

He doesn’t mean for it to happen but he thinks about Clarke, the noises she would make if he got his hands on her, the things she’d like. She’d probably be bossy and fuck if that doesn’t make him hot.

When he comes, he bites his tongue to the point of it bleeding to stop himself from saying her name.

Bellamy sneaks out of Bree’s place when the first rays of watery light start to creep through the window.

He doesn’t hook up with anyone else for a while.

* * *

It’s frankly ridiculous that he’s thinking about her this much. All that he and Clarke has done is flirt and yet, she’s there, lingering in the back of his mind.

He barely spares a second thought about any of the random string of hookups he’s had over the past few weeks, but when Clarke spots a hickey on his neck and traces it with a coy, “I bet I can give you a better one,” his skin burns for the next two days.

The plan to ignore her has basically crumbled into nothingness after he stops sleeping around, and despite his best efforts, Bellamy finds himself spending more and more time around their apartment.

At first, he blames it on his sister.

After all, she’s the one inviting him over on weekends to cook. And if sometimes during the week, he makes too much lasagne, it’s only right to stop by and drop it off instead of leaving it to go bad in his fridge. Then there’s that time Octavia complains about a missing button in her favourite shirt so Bellamy decides to pop in while she’s at school and sew it back on as a surprise for her.

Eventually once a week visits became twice a week, and now he’s over there almost every other day.

And of course, when he’s there, Clarke is there too.

Her job as a graphic designer allows her to work from home, and she always does so in oversized t-shirts and the smallest shorts known to mankind which, while distracting, he gets accustomed to quick enough. He sees her more than he does his own sister nowadays if he's honest.

“You’re staring,” she says, a bit smug, one evening while she’s working on her computer. He’s making them chilli and cornbread, which he just popped in the oven.

“I’m observing,” he shoots back at her, leaning over the countertop.

“Staring is impolite, Blake,” she tells him.

“Doesn’t stop you from doing it.”

“Oh you’ve noticed that, have you?”

“You  _ ogle _ , Princess.”

“I do not.”

He just hums and gives the chilli a stir, frowning when he catches a glimpse of the time on the stove clock.

“It’s past six. How come Octavia isn’t home as yet?”

Clarke just makes a sound in the back of her throat that he’s not sure how to interpret.

That’s been happening a lot more recently too. Octavia would be missing and when he asks Clarke about it she just brushes him off. His sister always brushes it off too, claiming that he’s just imagining things because he’s used to living with her 24/7.

He’s about to press her for more information because clearly something is  _ up _ , but then she says, “Today at that meeting, my client said that  _ Percy Jackson _ is the pinnacle of representation of Greek and Roman history in modern media and honestly, I had to agree,” which sets him  _ off _ . Bellamy doesn’t even think about Octavia until she bursts through the doors thirty minutes later while he’s in the middle of a rant about public perception of the myths as he sets the table.

“Sorry I’m late!” she says as she smacks a kiss to his cheek before disappearing into her room to drop all of her shit, ever the whirlwind. She’s back in the kitchen in less than a minute, holding a slightly squashed brown bag. “I brought cake!”

Bellamy ends his rant by sending a glare Clarke’s way and she responds with a smirk, rolling off the couch and stretching like a cat.

“You are so easy,” she murmurs as she brushes past him in the kitchen, on her way to grab a couple of beers from the fridge.

Bellamy glances over his shoulder at his sister, who’s texting away on her phone and paying them no attention, before leaning in close to her. His lips brush the shell of her ear when he says, “That was a mean trick, princess.”

She’s able to repress the shiver that runs down her spine but he notices anyway, and smirks.

“It worked though.” She pops the caps off the bottles with the nearby drawer handle and takes a pull from one. “And besides, I have meaner tricks up my sleeve that I can use to distract you.”

And, well, she has him there.

Octavia unknowingly acts as a buffer between him and Clarke when they sit down for dinner. She always does, if he’s being honest. When she’s in the room with them, the level of obvious flirting drops significantly, but it does nothing to curb the  _ looks _ Clarke sends his way. Bellamy obstinately ignores her, even when she runs a sock-clad foot down his calf.

Clarke does the dishes afterwards while he packs away the leftovers. Octavia is curled up on the couch scrolling through her phone.

“How come you were late, O?” he asks, sealing the tupperware container with a click. “Doesn’t the dentist close at like 5?”

She barely glances up as she says, “Yeah, but then some of my coworkers wanted to check out this new bakery downtown. Hence the cake.”

It  _ is  _ a pretty solid excuse, one that he probably wouldn’t think twice about if he didn’t know her that well. But Bellamy had practically raised Octavia, he knows all of her tells, knows that the fact that she refuses to make eye contact means that she’s hiding something and he narrows his eyes.

She doesn’t say anything more and for a moment, the tense silence lingers, until Clarke opens a cabinet with a loud screech.

“So who wants cake?” she asks as she pulls out a couple serving plates, effectively ending the moment.

Bellamy promises himself that he’ll eventually figure out what’s going on with her, but he honestly doesn’t have to do much digging because a week later he’s coming over with some groceries for them and opens the door to the apartment to find Octavia making out with some big muscled  _ man _ with tattoos, and he  _ loses it _ .

The fallout is one of epic proportions and even Clarke-- who was apparently out getting lunch with a friend, hence why Octavia decided to bring her  _ friend _ home-- wisely keeps her mouth shut during it.

“I’m not a child anymore, Bellamy!” she screams, poking him hard in the chest. “I can make my own goddamn choices!”

“Only children  _ lie _ like this, Octavia,” he shoots back at her. “I raised you better than that.”

“I never asked for you to raise me,” she seethes, eyes narrowing to dangerous slits, “You did that to yourself. I never asked you. I never  _ needed _ you.”

Her words cut deep, and Bellamy can feel the shock on his face. His sister for her part just looks proud that she managed to say something that sticks. It makes his stomach roll.

It only takes a few seconds for an emotionless mask to settle on his face and he nods, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “Fine. If that’s what you think.”

And without another word, he turns on his heel and stalks out, not even sparing a glance at Clarke, who had tried to make herself as small as possible on the couch, looking between the two siblings worriedly. 

Bellamy doesn’t go over to the apartment for over a week. He doesn’t speak to his sister for longer.

Octavia doesn’t make any efforts to reach him either.

He’s able to live his life without her. He has a full-time job at the bookshop where Pike has been letting him take on some extra responsibility in the hopes of eventually promoting him to manager. He bartends three nights a week, including every other Friday which sees him rolling in tips. He plays video games with Miller, smokes pot with Murphy and Emori, and calls up Roma for a booty call.

He’s doing  _ fine _ .

After about two weeks of radio silence from his sister, he’s sitting at home going through a list of books that Pike was thinking about bringing in to the shop when there’s a knock on his door.

He glances up and then at his watch, and frowns.

It’s just after four on a Saturday and he’s not really expecting any visitors at this time, especially since he has to be at the bar for six.

The frown only deepens when he opens it to find Clarke standing on the other side, backpack strung over a shoulder.

“Octavia is being insufferable,” she greets him, stepping in before he can say anything.

“Hello to you too,” he says with a roll of his eyes, but closes the door after her, sliding the deadlock in place.

She toes her shoes off in the entryway. “I came over to try and get some work done.” And then, after shooting him a sly glance, “And also maybe get a free meal out of you.”

He snorts. “Picked the wrong guy, princess. I have to go to work in a bit. Didn’t cook any dinner.”

Clarke wrinkles her nose and Bellamy tries to ignore how cute it makes her look. “Work? Octavia told me you worked at a bookstore.”

“I also bartend a few nights a week at this place a few blocks from here.”

“When do you even  _ sleep _ ?”

“At night,” he snarks, and she sticks her tongue out at him.

He lets Clarke stay though, watching as she curls up on his ratty old couch and whips out her computer to work. She puts her headphones on, a universal do-not-disturb sign, but he can’t help but watch her, learning the furrow between her brow and the way the tip of her tongue peeks through when she’s concentrating.

Bellamy shakes his head to clear it. He wanted to finish going through his lists before heading over to the bar and that’s not going to happen if he keeps on staring at her.

Luckily, it’s easy going and he finishes much quicker than he thought, so he goes over by Clarke who’s still sketching away on the couch.

She doesn’t notice him come up behind her, too focused on the piece that she’s working on. He lets his head hover just over her shoulder, close enough that he could smell the perfume that clings to her skin.

“What are you working on?” he asks and then smirks when she jumps with a small shriek.

“Jesus  _ fuck _ , Bellamy,” she swears, thumping him on the arm. “Don’t do that!”

“I just wanted a closer look!”

“Someone needs to put a bell on you,” she sniffs before angling the screen so he could see better. It’s a bunch of farm animals in space ships, some of them even wearing astronaut suits, and it gets a chuckle out of him. “One of my friends wrote a children’s book,” she explains, “He asked me if I would illustrate it for him.”

He smiles at her-- a real smile, not a smirk or a flirty grin. “That’s really cool, Clarke,” he says earnestly.

It makes her blush and she ducks her head. “Thanks.”

“You should let me know when it’s published. I’ll order some for the store.”

She squints up at him. “You can do that?”

It’s Bellamy’s turn to blush. “I, uh, may be up for a promotion to manager.”

Even though he’s been working at the shop for years now and knew that he was on the track to being promoted, he hasn’t told anyone about it as yet, not even his sister, too scared of jinxing it. But there’s something about Clarke’s big blue eyes, the sparkle in them, that spurs him to tell the truth, wanting to share this with her.

“Bellamy! That’s great! I’m so happy for you!” she says, pressing her shoulder into his and his blush darkens.

“It’s not a huge deal.”

“Of course it’s a huge deal. You’re gonna get promoted!”

“Well it hasn’t happened  _ yet _ .”

“It will,” she says fiercely and something warm blooms in his chest.

“Thanks,” he tells her, soft, and she smiles back at him, just as soft.

“Anytime.”

Bellamy stares at her for a minute longer, wanting to commit this moment to memory, not wanting it to ever end.

He stands up eventually and his knees creak, causing Clarke to laugh at him. He flicks her ear.

“I’m going to get ready for my shift at the bar, but since you wanted a free meal, how about we head down to this diner down the street? They have great pancakes,” he tells her, trying to be casual about it.

She squints at him. “Didn’t peg you as a pancakes guy.”

“I have layers. Like an onion.”

“Okay, Shrek.”

He tugs on her hair in retaliation, accidentally pulling it loose from her messy bun, and she squawks. One of her elbows comes flying at him, but Bellamy’s able to dodge it, grinning at her.

“You’re terrible,” she sniffs, trying to wrangle her hair into some sort of order.

“Be nice, I’m paying for your meal later.”

He takes a quick shower, and, conscious of Clarke being right outside, makes sure to bring his change of clothes with him into the bathroom. He’s used to just walking out with a towel wrapped around his waist, but there’s something about Clarke being there, seeing the soulmark that stains his ribs like a multicoloured bruise, that has him feeling self conscious.

And a bit guilty too, but he rather not read into that.

He shaves too, clearing out the day’s worth of stubble, and sprays on some cologne, the same cheap thing that he’s been buying from the corner drugstore for the past decade or so. He even goes through the trouble of combing his hair, parting it on the side and trying to get it to lay flat as opposed to just towel drying it and letting it run free.

“You ready?” he asks her while grabbing his wallet and keys from his bedroom.

Clarke hums in response and he turns to find her staring at him quizzically.

“Your hair looks dumb.”

“Your face is dumb,” he shoots back automatically, and she rolls her eyes.

She leans over while he’s putting on his shoes and runs her hands through it, using her fingers to rumple it up, and he freezes, heart lodged in his throat.

“There, all better,” she says, fixing his fringe.

She’s so close that for a moment, he imagines leaning in and closing that gap between them, pressing her against the arm of the couch and kissing her senseless. From the way she’s biting her lip, he wonders if she’s thinking about the same thing.

He swallows thickly.

“Do I pass the Clarke Griffin inspection?” he asks when he finally finds his voice again.

She glances up at him. “You’ll do.”

Clarke insists on driving them there even though the diner is five minutes away and Bellamy teases her about killing the environment. When she points out that she’d have to walk back, alone, at night, to his building to get it afterwards however, he shuts up.

The diner has a special place in his heart, if he’s being honest. When they first moved to the area, poor as shit and barely making ends meet, the diner is where he and Octavia would go on the weekends as a sort of splurge. It was open twenty four hours and they usually went for breakfast where she’d order pancakes and then absolutely  _ drench _ them in syrup.

He hasn’t been back here for breakfast since Octavia went away to college.

Bellamy ends up getting a stack of chocolate chip pancakes out of sheer nostalgia, and Clarke teases him relentlessly for it.

“I honestly thought you were joking,” she says, delighted as she watches him pour a respectable amount of syrup on the side of his plate. “Weren’t you the same one lecturing me on the benefits of kale a few weeks ago?”

“Kale is good for you,” he grumbles as he cuts into it for his first bite. “And it’s not like I eat this  _ all the time _ .”

“Well I should hope not,” she sniffs. “If you ate like this all the time and still managed to look like  _ that, _ then it would be a crime.”

Bellamy lifts his eyebrows. “Look like what?” he asks, a teasing lilt evident in his voice.

She throws him a baleful glare. “You know exactly what you look like,” she says darkly before taking a bite out of her burger and almost moaning at the taste.

“I really don’t. You gonna have to spell it out for me, Princess.”

“I really hate you.”

He just leans across and steals a fry from her plate, popping it in his mouth before she can even sputter out an objection. 

“You  _ suck _ ,” she announces, and Bellamy just grins at her, exposing the half eaten fries he just swiped from her plate. She makes a sound of disgust in the back of her throat. “Jail. Jail for you and your petty thievery.”

“But if I go to prison then who else are you gonna ogle at, Princess?”

She kicks him under the table, but Bellamy grins for the rest of their dinner.

He does pay for their meal as promised afterwards, and then Clarke drives him to the bar, hitting the edge of the curb as she tries to park.

“Shut up,” she hisses at him, smacking his shoulder, but it just makes him laugh louder. “I am never giving you a ride again.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, I won’t make fun of your abysmal driving skills,” he says, though he can’t quite hide the mirth in his voice.

“My driving skills are fine. It’s my parking skills that suck.”

“Didn’t you almost run over that guy two blocks before?”

Clarke glares at him. “Get out.”

“Goodbye princess,” he tells her as he climbs out, “Try not to kill anyone on your way home.” She just rolls down the window so he could have a better view of her flipping him off, and he barks out a laugh.

His good mood lasts throughout the rest of his shift, even when he has to break up a bar fight between a couple of frat guys. All he can think about is Clarke’s laugh, that intoxicating sound that he wishes he could bottle up and store forever.

She becomes a permanent fixture in his life then, settling into it as if she was always there.

The next few weeks see her swinging by his apartment pretty often, sometimes bringing takeout but most nights letting him cook dinner for her. He doesn’t ask about his sister and she doesn’t mention her either, even though they both know he wants to hear about her.

Clarke also forces him to binge things with her on Netflix when she realises that his pop culture knowledge is woefully lacking. She makes him watch things like trashy reality tv, a bunch of Netflix movies and  _ Avatar _ (the cartoon, not the movie because Clarke says the movie is an abomination).

She also claims his couch as her own personal workstation and when Bellamy mentions that he was thinking about turning the spare bedroom into an office, she’s all too happy to help him out, the two of them turning it into a weekend project. They get a desk and a chair and fancy looking floor lamp that she found for eight dollars off of Facebook marketplace. Now, when Bellamy’s sat at the table filling out orders for the shop, Clarke is more often than not there with him too, curled up like a cat in the armchair nearest to the window, sometimes working but most times sketching, although she never shows him what she’s doing.

It’s nice having her around.

A few weeks into their whole arrangement, Bellamy comes home from a shift at the bookstore to find her on the couch, trying and failing at playing one of his video games.

“I made a copy of Octavia’s key,” she tells him when she notices him standing there, staring in confusion at her spot on the couch. “Figured you wouldn’t mind.”

“Clarke Griffin, you are a menace,” he announces, before changing out of his work clothes and showing her how to play  _ Assassin’s Creed _ . They don’t even notice the hours that fly by until their stomachs are grumbling, and he ends up calling for a pizza to be delivered.

Bellamy learns Clarke in bits and pieces.

Her favourite colour is green because it reminds her of the trees and fresh air, she was pre-med in college but minored in art and after graduation she decided to pursue it full-time, much to the chagrin of her mother. She’s a card-carrying member of the dead parents club, her dad passing away from cancer in her junior year of college. She’s always wanted a dog, but she’s allergic.

He tells her about himself in turn too, swapping a story for a story. He wouldn’t say that he knows her inside out-- they both have their own demons, his being his mother and hers was anything to do with her tattoos. But they talk and learn and the wanting that settled heavy and hot in his stomach at the start of their friendship has mellowed into something else, something sweeter and warmer and not as distracting.

Still, she does make the occasional flirty comment from time to time and who would he be if he didn't give her a little something in return? He’d do anything to see that pretty pink flush bloom across her cheeks, anything to make her giggle like that.

* * *

Almost six weeks have passed since the argument with Octavia and Bellamy has more or less settled into being stubborn about it. He’s dug his hole and is content to stay there for however long need be.

Clarke on the other hand is not.

She invites him over for an end of summer dinner at the apartment, one that she’ll be hosting with his sister, and when he grumbles about it, she all but bullies him into coming.

“You  _ will _ come and you  _ will _ be a good sport about the whole thing,” she says, taking time to glare at him while she rifles through his closet.

He rolls his eyes, face settling into a scowl. “I really don’t want to see Octavia, Clarke.”

“And I don’t want to have to put up with both of you bitching.” She pauses, grabbing a maroon henley and holding it up against him before discarding it on the bed. “The two of you are clearly miserable.”

“She deserves to be miserable,” he mutters darkly and gets an elbow to the gut in response.

“Just apologise to her.”

He crosses his arms over his chest and glares at her, but there’s no real heat behind it. “Why do I have to be the one to apologise? She’s the one who lied to my face several times.”

Clarke sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You’ll apologise because you’re the bigger person.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be the bigger person.”

“Then I’ll make you be the bigger person,” she threatens before plucking out a dark blue dress shirt with a triumphant ‘aha!’ “Wear this when you come over.”

He wrinkles his nose. “A shirt? How fancy is this shindig?”

“Not that fancy, and yes, a shirt.” She runs a critical eye over his form. “You look good in blue.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, and she doesn’t really give him a chance to, bulldozing straight ahead.

“It’s Saturday at six, and some of my other friends will be there,” she tells him, hanging the chosen shirt up on his closet door before packing back all the others she took out. “Use that as an incentive to be on your best behaviour.”

He tries for a smirk. “You mean you  _ don’t _ like it when I behave badly?” he asks, sidling up behind her so that she can feel the heat of him.

For once, Clarke doesn’t budge.

She just glares at him. “I’m being serious, Bellamy. Frankly, I’m on your side for this whole thing. I know Octavia hurt you with what she said but I also know that she’s  _ Octavia _ . She’s stubborn. Even more stubborn than you.”

He blinks at her. “Went through pre-med and now you think you’re a shrink, huh,” he says gruffly, trying to play the casual angle but Clarke isn’t having any of it.

“Just apologise first for overreacting,” she says softly, touching his arm. “It’ll make it easier to talk things through with her. I know she misses you. She’ll come around and see how special you are.”

She glances away, stepping out of his space before he can do anything, and resumes packing back all the clothes she removed from his closet.

He does show up on Saturday, just as he promised, half an hour early with a bottle of wine and a tupperware full of deviled eggs. Clarke said that she was cooking, and he was just a little bit skeptical, considering he’s never actually seen her cook before. For all he knows, she could be terrible.

Octavia is the one to answer the door when he knocks, face impassive.

Try as he might, Bellamy still can’t help the pang his heart gives when he sees his baby sister for the first time in almost a month and a half. He catalogues the little changes-- a haircut, a new stud in her ear, the swap from lipgloss to what he assumes is a stain of some sort.

“Can I come in?”

“I don’t know, can you?” she snarks in return and Bellamy is proud of himself for not rolling his eyes.

She does step aside for him though, and he comes inside, toeing his shoes off before putting them in the closet. The apartment smells like fresh herbs and butter and he can see Clarke in the kitchen, a flurry of chaos. She smiles when she sees him and then laughs when her gaze lands on the tupperware.

“Ye of little faith,” she tells him, but takes the container nonetheless and starts to plate its contents on an empty serving tray.

Behind him Octavia scoffs, and Clarke shoots him a knowing look.

Gritting his teeth, he shoves his hands in his pockets and turns to face her. “Can we talk?” he asks, and she narrows her eyes at him.

She gives him a terse nod and leads him to her room. It’s funny to think that just a few months prior, at the start of summer, he was helping her put it together, rebuilding the bed, assisting Clarke with the curtains.

The door shuts behind them with a soft click. They both stand on opposite sides of the room, assessing one another.

He takes a deep breath before he starts speaking, having planned and prepared a whole speech, but when he opens his mouth all that comes out is,

“I’m sorry.”

The words hang in the air for a long moment, heavy and weighted as it waits for someone to say something else, but all Octavia does is cross her arms, mouth slashed into a thin line.

He tries again, and this time he’s actually able to get into the speech, outlining what exactly he was sorry about and also making a point to mention that she too had hurt him. At the end of it Octavia doesn’t exactly apologise, but she does hug him and grudgingly admit that  _ maybe _ she could have thought things out a bit better, and after about twenty minutes of catching up and commiserating, things are good as new between them.

Which is just as well, because he can hear the chatter and raucous laughter of Clarke’s friends through the door, the party already in full swing.

“Come on, dumbass,” she says, throwing an arm around his shoulders as she leads them back out to the living room, “We’ve got a party to host.”

“I thought I was a guest,” he says, and she snorts.

“Yeah right. Clarke and I both know you’ll fret all evening if you don’t have some semblance of control. You’re a control freak.”

He stutters to a halt, affronted. “I am not a control freak--”

The rest of his sentence-- as well as the rest of his breath-- is lost when a small blur of blonde throws herself against his side.

“Bellamy!” Clarke says happily, holding a glass of wine rather precariously. She’s changed her outfit, slipping out of her usual shorts and oversized tee combo and into a cute little sundress. It’s pale blue with daisies embroidered into the neckline. “Come, I want you to meet my friends.”

She doesn’t wait for his response, instead grabbing his hand and tugging him back out into the living room.

She immediately launches into introductions, pointing out Raven and Jasper and Monty, and Monty’s girlfriend Harper who he actually does know in a vague roundabout way since they go to the same gym together.

Bellamy finds that he slides into the group almost seamlessly and Clarke teases him that it’s because the charisma practically oozes off of him.

“You’re not like us prickly plebs who actually have to  _ work _ for our social circles,” she tells him, and he tugs on the end of her ponytail.

He even meets his sister’s  _ boyfriend _ , Lincoln, who shows up right before they start setting the table, and he manages to have a civil conversation with him. He learns that he’s twenty seven, a dental nurse at the same clinic Octavia works at, and that as of a few days ago, he has matching tattoos with his sister.

Bellamy does not bat an eye when he says all of this, but that may be because Clarke is sitting on the armrest next to him, her hand resting on his thigh so that her sharp little nails are able to dig into his skin like a feral cat’s. There’s no doubt in his mind that even if he tried to make a scene, she’d manage to rip his throat from his body before he can say a word. It’s times like these he realises just how fucking scary she can be.

It honestly shouldn’t be a turn on for him and  _ yet _ \--

Dinner turns out to be shrimp scampi and garlic bread that she made from  _ scratch _ . Clarke proudly tells him about her bread-making efforts. He just laughs, and then swipes her piece from her plate, much to her chagrin.

Raven brought a cake for dessert, and Monty has pulled a bottle of something that smells like gasoline and begins passing it around. Bellamy gets a glass, and it makes his eyes water.

Someone breaks out a board game-- Taboo he thinks-- once the dessert plates are cleared, and they’ve started divvying up into teams. A fight almost broke out when Raven tells Monty that he and Jasper can’t be on the same team, because their weird telepathy counts as cheating. He just shakes his head, smiling a little, and steals away onto the balcony. He doesn’t think anyone sees nor does he believe that his absence would be noticed.

The summer night is humid but the wind blows cold, carrying just enough of a bite to make him wish that he wore a thicker shirt. He still doesn’t roll down his sleeves though. He’d rather suffer through the cold than do that.

The apartment doesn’t really have much of a view of anything. It’s surrounded by other apartment buildings and some small businesses, a palette of greys and brick. But the sky is mostly clear, even through the perpetual layer of smog that covers the city, and he can just make out the stars, all but drowned out by the glow of the full moon. Down below he can hear the sound of traffic, the rumbling of engines, the occasional car horn. It somehow all manages to still be peaceful, a white noise lost in the background.

There’s the sound of the door sliding open behind him but he doesn’t glance back. The wind blows again, this time carrying with it the smell of honeysuckle and expensive perfume. Somehow he’s not surprised.

Clarke sidles up next to him and leans against the railing, forearms braced against the cool metal just like him, and she too looks up at the stars. Neither of them say a word.

“I used to come out here and smoke,” she tells him after a moment of silence.

He lifts an eyebrow. “Thought you were pre-med. Don’t you know the dangers of smoking?”

Her grin is nothing more than a flash of pearly white teeth in the night. “Who says I was smoking cigarettes?”

He barks out a laugh. “Every time I think I’ve got you all figured out you still manage to surprise me,” he says, fond, as he looks down at her.

She turns to face him, leaning in a bit closer. Her arm is flush with his. “I like to keep you on your toes.”

The fluorescent lighting makes her hair look almost platinum. She’s let it out of the sleek ponytail she had earlier and now it surrounds her, all wayward tendrils and frizz. He can’t help but reach out and touch it, brushing it behind her ear and letting his knuckles caress the softness of her cheek.

She shivers, eyes going dark, and pulls her bottom lip into her mouth, biting down on it.

His hand lingers, hesitating, before he lets himself learn the curve of her jaw, feel the column of her neck, her pulse racing when he finds that sensitive spot on her skin. She’s so small compared to him. One of his hands could probably cover her entire neck.

He finds himself leaning in closer and closer as he does this, studying her, and she’s doing the same too, rolling onto the balls of her feet to meet him in the middle.

It’s a gentle brush of lips, testing, seeking, waiting, and as much as Bellamy wants to consume her and be consumed in turn, he pulls back.

“I have a soulmate,” he says quietly, the admission leaving the taste of ash in his mouth.

Clarke doesn’t miss a beat; she shrugs. “So do I,” she says, and her hand comes to tangle in his hair at the base of his neck, easy as nothing as though she hasn’t completely pulled the rug out from underneath him.

She tugs him to her again and he goes willingly.

She tastes like the wine they had for dinner, sweet and lush, and he can’t help but lick into her mouth, and Clarke gives a breathy sigh. His hand shifts so that he’s cupping her jaw, thumb swiping against the arch of her cheekbone, and he wants, god he  _ wants _ .

What was once a quiet type of yearning has now grown into something else entirely, a different kind of want, a  _ need _ , that’s almost all-consuming in nature.

He wants to feel the press of her body against his, wants to push her against the balustrade and kiss down her neck, sucking and biting until he leaves fields of lavender blooming against her skin, wants to feel her gasp and tremble beneath him.

Instead Bellamy pulls back, kisses her once, twice more, before pulling away completely and observing her.

Clarke’s eyes are dark and glassy, a pretty flush draped over her cheeks and her mouth kiss-bitten and wine-stained.

He tugs a hand through his curls, windswept and tangled in the night air.

“You’re drunk,” he says bluntly, shoving his hands in the pockets of his pants.

“Am not,” she snorts. The thin strap of her dress has slipped off her shoulder, exposing creamy skin. He wants to bite it. “I had maybe three glasses of wine at the very most.”

“Still.” Bellamy needs to turn away, the sight of her getting to be too much, his restraint hanging on by a fucking thread.

“Do you-- do you not want this?” she asks, displaying an uncharacteristic amount of vulnerability that makes him stumble for a moment. 

In the few months that he’s known Clarke, she’s never been anything but sure of herself, ready to grab the world by the horns and shake down what was owed to her. It is both awe-inspiring and intimidating. Now, to think that it’s him who sowed doubt in her mind, well, it makes his heart clench.

He scrubs a hand down his face.

“Do I not want this,” he scoffs, “Of course I want this.”

“Then what’s stopping you?”

The question catches him off guard. What  _ is _ stopping him?

Well, the easiest answer would be the fact that they both have soulmates.

But Bellamy’s never used that as an excuse before, and he doubts that Clarke would accept it if he tried to do so now. It would probably hurt her even more if he did.

They’re both single and interested and while the weight of his soulmark on his chest presses down almost uncomfortably, forcing itself to be known, he easily bats the feeling to the side with practiced ease. He may have a soulmate but they’re not  _ here _ .

They’re not  _ Clarke. _

He frowns when he realizes that he doesn’t have a good answer to her question.

So he doesn’t reply.

He doesn’t reply or pose a question of his own, or even say anything at all. Instead, he crosses the small slip of space between them and takes her face in both hands, kissing her hard, almost to the point of pain.

Clarke makes a surprised sound in the back of her throat before kissing him back, just as hard, just as rough, and he sees galaxies behind his eyelids.

There is the sweet, coppery taste of blood in his mouth and he’s not sure who it belongs to, but it feels right for whatever this is, surely to be painful and self-destructive but he craves it anyway.

When he pulls away this time, Clarke is dazed, blinking up at him as though she’s finally seeing him for the first time.

“We should go back inside,” he says gruffly, “Octavia might be wondering where we are.”

He doesn’t wait for her to say anything and slips back into the apartment, leaving without a second glance.

* * *

They don’t mention the kiss.

They don’t mention how Bellamy all but ran out on her, a coward in all sense of the word. They don’t talk about how the scent of her lingered on his shirt for days to come, how even hours after, he could still taste her on his mouth, a new intoxicating thing that has him addicted from the very first hit.

Bellamy limits his conversation with Clarke via text, telling her that he’s busy with work. It’s not exactly a lie, but they both know that he’s always made time for her before. Still, she doesn’t press him and for that he’s thankful.

However, though a coward he might be, he still misses her, a physical ache in his chest, and that’s why a week later he caves and asks if she wants to come over that evening.

The  _ yes  _ she sends in reply comes less than a minute later.

He’s still nervous about seeing her after everything that happened, but when Clarke does finally show up, bringing a bag of Chinese take-out and immediately launching into an argument with him about why sweet and sour chicken was better than his favourite broccoli and beef, he realises that he had nothing to be worried about.

At least until they settle in together on the couch after he’s washed their dinner dishes.

“You okay, Princess?” he asks, watching as she fidgets again in an effort to get more comfortable on the couch. She put on  _ Money Heist _ for them to watch, but if Bellamy was being honest, he was paying more attention to her than whatever was going on on-screen.

Clarke huffs and pulls her legs up beneath her on the couch, angling her body towards his.

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” she grumbles.

He frowns a little and reaches for the remote to turn the volume down. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” She frowns, pausing for a second. “Actually, can I just--”

She doesn’t wait for him to respond, already leaning over and kissing him on the mouth.

Bellamy freezes, eyes going wide.

Her mouth is dry and a little bit chapped from the cold, but he can still taste the faint hint of cherry from her chapstick. As quick as the kiss began, it’s over, and Clarke is sitting back on haunches, regarding him like some sort of science experiment.

“Um.” He’s not sure how to begin.

The tips of her ears go pink as a flush works its way down to her cheeks. “Sorry I-- I couldn’t stop thinking about that.”

He blinks.

And then blinks again.

And then smirks as he finally takes in her words. “Don’t tell me I rocked your world  _ that _ much, Griffin,” he teases, and she scoffs at him.

“You wish,” she sniffs haughtily, tossing her hair back, “That kiss just now was mediocre. Perfectly adequate at best.”

“Because you attacked me!” he says, laughing a little. “I didn’t know how to react.”

“Excuses, excuses,” she says, though there’s a twinkle in her eye. 

He leans in close. “If it really was  _ mediocre _ , then how come you were thinking about it?” he asks, voice soft as he carefully caresses the side of her neck with a whisper of a touch.

“Maybe I built it up too much in my mind. Made it something that it wasn’t.” Her voice remains steady, but he feels the way her heartbeat quickens.

His fingers trace the delicate line of her jaw as he comes in even closer, his face almost pressed against her skin, and he’s able to hear the hitch in her breath.

“Then allow me to clarify,” he murmurs, before cupping her jaw with a large hand and pulling her to him.

Much like the first kiss, it’s deep and wet, his lips moving slow against hers in an effort to coax the appropriate response out of her. He can feel her trembling slightly in his arms, feel the way her palm is curled into a first around the soft material of his t-shirt, anchoring him there. Bellamy doesn’t rush it, taking his time with the kiss while his free hand slips under her shirt to press against the small of her back. It pulls her closer to him, eliciting a gasp from her mouth, and he takes the opportunity to gently suck on her lower lip.

It gets an almost inaudible moan out of her, but he still manages to hear it and that’s when he smirks, going from softly sucking to biting and chasing away the sting of it with a swipe of his tongue. It gets a louder, more surprised groan out of her and that’s when he pulls back, his forehead pressed against hers.

“Was that mediocre?” he asks, voice gruff and covered in a thick layer of want.

Her eyelids flutter open, and her irises have been reduced to thin strips of colour bordering dark pools of hunger.

Clarke licks her lips.

“I think I might need further clarification,” she tells him, and Bellamy grins, sharp and boyish, before swooping in once more.

This time it’s hard and fast and Clarke meets him stroke for stroke, kiss for kiss, licking at the seams of his mouth and demanding entrance. She’s bossy, and Bellamy is more than happy for her to take control, to take what she wants from him.

He loses himself in her kisses, chasing the feel of her mouth, the feel of  _ her _ , the softness of her skin, the way she manages to be both supple curves and sharp edges at the same time. He draws her closer until there’s not even a breath of space between them, just the feel of Clarke pressed up against him, halfway in his lap, both hands in his hair.

She rocks against his thigh, just a quick movement that he wouldn’t have noticed if it hadn’t sent a full body shudder through her.

He pulls back just a bit to watch her, hand creeping towards the waistband of her leggings.

“Do you want--”

“Please,” she asks, nodding, and he has to hide a smirk against the column of her throat.

Something tells him that they should probably talk about this, that they’re moving too fast, but then she makes that sound again, a cross between a whine and a moan as she shifts her hips, and all thoughts of talking fly out of his head. He wants to hear that sound again. He wants to be the one  _ responsible _ for her making that sound again.

Still, he can’t help but tease her for a moment longer, tracing his fingers across the waistband of her leggings and feeling the way her stomach quivered beneath his touch.

At her next breathy whine, when her hips rock down against his leg again, he slips in a hand and swears when he finds the heat of her. 

Bellamy keeps his face pressed against the overheated skin of her neck as he works at her, fingers playing her like a piano. He mutters all sorts of filthy things into her neck, how good she feels, how he loves the sounds she makes and do you know how fuckin’ long he’s been thinking about making her fall apart for him? Clarke is breathless, soft mewls falling from her lips, and Bellamy breathes in the scent of her, all honeysuckle and fresh linen and  _ sex _ .

She comes with a broken moan, two of his fingers knuckle deep inside her cunt, and he can feel her pulse racing beneath his lips.

He smacks a kiss to it before pulling away.

“You’re too fucking good at that,” she tells him when she finally manages to breathe again and he smirks at her as he removes his fingers. She whimpers, but then it transforms into a quiet ‘ _ fuck _ ’ when she watches him slip them into his mouth and lick them clean.

“So I’ve been told,” he snarks, but his breath catches when she reaches down to cup the bulge in his jeans.

“Don’t be cocky,” she murmurs, all hooded eyes and voice heavy with want and promises. She gives him a gentle squeeze, and he widens the vee of his legs for her.

“We should talk about this, don’t you think?” he mumbles against her lips. Clarke’s a fucking good kisser, and she seems to have a read on him already.

She tugs on his hair, and he moans brokenly in her mouth, barely even realising that she’s undone the snap of his jeans until her hand is cupping him through the thin fabric of his boxers. Bellamy swears and she laughs, bright and clear, like windchimes.

“If you can still think about  _ talking _ while I’m doing all of this, then it means I’m not doing a good job,” she tells him, giving him one last kiss before slipping off of him. She settles herself between his legs, on her knees, and finally pulls his cock out.

“Fuck, you’re right,” he groans, letting his head tip back at the first touch of her lips to his skin, and that’s all he can really say for a while, his hand tangled in her hair. He thinks he manages a couple of ‘ _ fuck _ ’s and ‘ _ oh god Clarke _ ’s but he really can’t say. It’s all just a blur to him.

One long, pleasurable blur.

Later, after he sags against the cushions and she comes back from swishing Listerine around her mouth, he broaches the topic again.

He’s not looking at her as he says it, trying his best to come off as nonchalant by keeping his eyes glued to his phone screen instead.

But when Clarke doesn’t answer after a moment, he glances up at her, only to find her tracing the tattoo on her ankle. It’s just a small stick and poke tattoo of a pineapple, maybe as big as a quarter, but she stares at it so intently that Bellamy wonders what meaning it holds behind it.

For a brief second he wonders if  _ this _ is her soulmark, and his stomach turns at the thought. He’s quick to banish it though, because while that tattoo clearly meant something to Clarke, it was just that. A tattoo. Too imperfect and messy to be a soulmark.

“I’m not a relationship person,” she says at last, not looking at him. “I’ve tried to do that before with other people and… it exploded in my face.” And then, looking directly in his eye, she says bluntly, “I don’t date.”

“I never asked you too,” he cuts in quickly.

It pulls a wry smile across her lips. “I know. I just didn’t want you to get any ideas.”

Bellamy shrugs. “I don’t really date either.”

What he doesn’t tell her is why. He doesn’t tell her how he’s seen firsthand what it’s like to have your soulmate belong to someone else, that he can’t bring himself to cause that kind of hurt to someone. Doesn’t tell her that more often than not, he finds himself loathing the mark that has been branded on his skin. He hates it, the idea that somewhere out there is a person who’s supposed to be your other half, perfectly designed for you. What was supposed to be a gift from the universe feels like a cop out more than anything else.

Her eyebrows tip up. “I always figured you were a relationship person.”

“Seriously? Why?”

“Because you’re all, you know,” she makes a vague gesture towards him and Bellamy just stares because no, he doesn’t know. “Like  _ that _ . You like taking care of people.”

He snorts. “So that automatically predisposes me as being a relationship person?”

“Well clearly not.”

She’s smiling a little bit, probably laughing at the absurdity of all this, still high off the feel of the orgasm from earlier. He grins back too, even as he slouches against the couch, throwing an arm across the back of it.

“So where does this leave us?” she asks, folding herself into the seat next him and prodding his calves with her cold toes.

“Depends,” he says, impassive, “Where do you want to be left?”

Clarke cocks her head to the side and just observes him, the splay of his legs, the zipper of his jeans still pulled down, the way his hair is undoubtedly messy and tangled from her hands.

Just like before, she leans in close, her lips capturing his in what was supposed to be a quick kiss. He catches her jaw before she pulls away though, and brings her back for more, for something deeper and wetter and slow. They make out for a while, getting lost in the feel of lips pressed against lips and tongues tangled with one another. Her jaw is a small fragile thing in his hands and she has her arms twined around his neck.

“I want to keep doing that,” she murmurs when they pull away, her lips swollen and red.

His thumb brushes along the arch of her cheekbone. “So let’s keep doing it.”

Her eyes light up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well twist my arm why don’t you,” she says, and he snorts.

“Yeah, you’re going to be really hard to persuade,” he deadpans, dropping a hand to her hip and giving it a squeeze.

Clarke smirks, throwing one leg over so that she’s now perched in his lap, bracing her hands on his shoulder for balance. “I can give you some hints on how to, ah,  _ persuade _ me,” she tells him, lips brushing against his cheek.

The hands on her hips flex, drawing her closer. “I’m all ears.”

* * *

Casual sex isn’t really anything new to Bellamy. In fact, it might be one of the few constants in his life. Dating is already a minefield on its own, throw in a soulmark and it becomes a veritable clusterfuck. The closest he’s ever come to that was with Gina back before he moved out to the city. She was pretty and funny and they dated for a few months before her soulmate turned up. It was the closest thing to heartbreak he’s ever experienced.

So now he just hooks up.

It’s easy to find willing partners who want the same thing he wants and besides, it’s not something that he does  _ often _ . Just maybe once in a while when he wants to scratch a particular itch.

This thing with Clarke is no different.

Not much changes after that night he gets her off on his couch. She still comes over to work some nights and he still goes over to the apartment whenever he can. Though things with him and Octavia are better, they’re still not 100%, and he doesn’t like forcing Clarke to play mediator between them whenever he’s over. So they usually end up at his place.

Which is fine, because Clarke jumps on him at the most random of times.

“Seriously?” he asks, laughing against her mouth while she climbs on top of him. “Now?”

The TV is still playing in the background. They were watching  _ Tiger King _ at Clarke’s behest, because she was aghast when she found out that he hadn’t seen it yet.

(“Carol Baskin is an  _ icon _ ,” she told him when she was trying to convince him to watch it.)

“I don’t hear you complaining,” she grumbles, rubbing up against him just  _ so  _ and making Bellamy see white for a second.

“Just didn’t realise this got you hot,” he smirks, squeezing a breast through her shirt. She had a meeting today with a prospective client, which meant she had to put on actual clothes for once. The shirt is white and silky with annoying little pearl buttons that he’s not even going to begin to try to get undone.

“Oh yeah, Joe Exotic really does it for me,” she snarks before biting the cord of muscle in his neck a bit too hard, but it makes his hips buck all the same.

Bellamy grimaces. “See now, that’s a mood killer right there,” he tells her and she snorts.

“Well you better revive it, because I’ve been thinking about this  _ all day _ ,” she half whines. 

“Yeah?”

“It’s been two weeks Bellamy.” She drops a kiss on his jaw. “My hands and memories can only serve me that well.”

A shiver of pleasure runs down his spine. “You been thinkin’ about this all day, princess?” he asks, voice dipping a few octaves lower. It’s gruff and dark and chock full of promises, and it makes her bite down on her lip.

“Maybe.”

He kisses her again, hard and bruising. “I want to know what you were thinking about.” His hand lingers by the waistband of her slacks, thumb rolling over the button of it. “Tell me.”

Clarke is panting, squirming in his lap, all keyed up already and he hasn’t even properly touched her as yet.

“I was thinking about how much I like kissing you,” she murmurs, fingertips brushing against his jaw. “You have a nice mouth.”

His lips quirk up. “That supposed to be a hint?”

“I’m just laying out the facts.”

“Hmm.” His lips trail across the side of her neck and then suddenly Clarke finds herself tipping backwards. She squawks, scrambling for purchase by gripping his shoulders and his laughter vibrates her skin.

He lays her back against the couch and pulls her trousers and underwear off in one quick motion, leaving her bare. The hardwood floors hurt his knees a bit when he kneels in front of her, eye level with her cunt, and he licks his lips.

“Gorgeous girl,” he rasps, hands trailing down the length of her legs.

Bellamy drops a kiss to her ankle, just above the tattoo, and her breath catches.

“Lemme show you just how  _ nice _ my mouth can be,” he mumbles into her skin, lips lazily tracing their way up from her ankle to the back of her knee to the inside of her thigh. Clarke whimpers above him and he smiles, mouthing across the crease of her thigh.

She’s already trembling by the time he gets his mouth on her, licking into her all wet and messy, and Clarke tugs on his hair, holding him close. She bucks against his face when he sucks on her clit, and as much as Bellamy would like to draw this out, make it last as long as possible, she’s writhing beneath him, his name sweet on her lips. So just a few minutes later, after a careful swipe of his tongue to her clit, she’s coming, and he laps it all up, licking her clean and leaving her boneless.

Her skin is flushed when he sits back on his haunches to admire his handiwork, pretty and pink and her chest is heaving up on down, still clad in her shirt and somehow managing to still look ridiculously sexy. He can feel the slick of her still coating his mouth and chin when she reaches for him, but Clarke clearly doesn’t mind, kissing him deep and dirty.

“Did that live up to your expectations?” he asks against her lips. Her hands are all over him, squeezing his muscles, tugging on his hair.

She pulls back and smirks. “I don’t think your ego is what needs stroking at the moment,” she tells him, palming him through his jeans.

“Fair point,” he chokes, letting her do whatever it is she wants. She’s still boneless and tired from her last orgasm, and he considers it a job well done.

She gives him a handjob, messy and a little bit sloppy, but satisfying nonetheless. It leaves him with his face buried in the side of her neck, swearing something filthy, and Clarke thrives in it.

“I’m glad we decided to keep doing that,” she says after, cuddling with him a little as they bask in the afterglow. “That was a good decision on our part.”

He snorts. “Yeah, good thinking.”

“Well I can’t take  _ all _ the credit for it, Bellamy. It was a group effort.”

“You’re ridiculous,” he tells her and then drops a kiss to the crown of her head.

Fall dawns on them early and sudden, bringing with it a sweep of golden leaves and a chill in the mornings. Octavia starts her second year at university and Bellamy gets that promotion at the bookstore, and they celebrate by getting drunk off of some of Monty’s leftover hooch that remained back at the apartment. It leads to him and Clarke making out on the balcony again when his sister goes to shower, sloppy and messy and she gets off by grinding against his leg.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re insatiable?” he asks as they sneak back in. She offered to blow him, but the moonshine had dulled his senses so much that he’s only half hard so he waves her off.

“That a problem for you old man?” she teases, propping him between the ribs, fingers landing so close to where his soulmark laid that it makes his breath stutter.

“Not at all,” he says, and he doesn’t think she notices that his voice sounds off.

He has to admit, the friendship he has with Clarke is a strange one. Apart from the obvious bit-- friends don’t  _ usually _ hook up with each other-- there are parts of her that remain blank to him. He knows all about her tempestuous relationship with her mother, but he doesn’t know basic things, like how she takes her coffee, or what’s her favourite colour. If it was anyone else he would leave it but it’s  _ Clarke _ . That same silent longing that made him interested in learning her in the first place is rearing its head once more.

It’s easier now to talk about things than before though. They swap information about their lives back and forth like trading cards, just bits of trivia here and there.

“Anyone who puts milk before their cereal deserves to go to  _ jail _ , Clarke.”

“Oh bite me, Bellamy.”

“Yeah? Tell me where you want it, princess.”

“I can’t believe you just said that  _ Wuthering Heights  _ is better than  _ Jane Eyre. _ ”

“I did and it is.”

“ _ Blasphemy _ .”

“I work in a bookshop, Clarke, my word is law.”

“I can’t believe you’re an iced tea kind of guy, I thought you had  _ taste _ . You might at well inject sugar directly into your veins.”

“Clarke, you just dumped five packs of sugar into your coffee, you have no leg to stand on in this argument.”

“How have you never seen  _ Buffy _ ? It’s a classic!”

“I was too busy back then, you know, learning object permanence and all that.”

“You could have watched it online, you freak.”

“Is that your subtle way of suggesting we watch it together, Bellamy?”

“Of course we’re watching it together, I need to make sure you develop the correct  _ opinions  _ about it.”

“You know,” she starts one evening while he’s making them dinner. They’re at her place although Octavia has a date with Lincoln and won’t be joining them. “You never told me about your tattoos.”

He freezes for a fraction of a second, the statement taking him by surprise. “I could say the same of you, princess,” he says, giving the pot of marinara sauce a stir before turning the heat on low. This is a conversation that sounds like it deserves his undivided attention.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” she teases, and he snorts.

“You’re ridiculous.”

Tattoos are a touchy subject for Clarke, he knows that. It’s why he’s so surprised that she brought it up in the first place.

He has three tattoos in total, not counting his soulmark. A quote from the Iliad that wraps around his bicep, a small kotinos at the nape of his neck, and of course the ouroboros that sits on his forearm, the one that Clarke has her eyes trained on right now.

“I got it for my mother,” he says, soft, brushing his fingers over the thick dark lines that stain his skin. “It usually means life and death, or rebirth sometimes. I, uh, I’m not sure how much I believe in all of that but I hope if she gets another life, it won’t be like this one. It would be gentle, kinder. She deserves that.”

Her hand curls around his, the same one that was tracing his tattoo, a quiet kind of support. They’ve mentioned their parents before, not exactly at length but enough times that he knows the gist of it.

“My dad died when I was a junior in college. Made me realise that medicine wasn’t for me,” she says, showing him the first of the two dates on her arm. “The other one is for my best friend, Wells.”

She stops to take a shuddering breath, and Bellamy trails his thumb across her knuckles. She flashes him a sad smile in return. Her eyes are glassy.

“He died when we were fourteen. Leukemia. It sucks to watch someone care about wither away in front of your eyes. Wells always said that when he got out he wanted to open a flower shop. I’d always bring him some when I went to visit, most times I’d just steal them from the front of the hospital,” she gives a watery laugh and Bellamy sees a tear roll down her cheek. “He even used to make me paint the cherry blossoms that were right outside his window. I used to tease him that they were right there, the real thing way better than my shitty paintings but he used to insist. I must have done like fifty of them. He loved flowers.”

She drops her head forward, hiding her face from her and he crowds into her space, wrapping her up into a hug. It’s a cruel sort of thing to have in common, but at least he knows how to deal with grief, how to help ease her pain.

They don’t say much as they stand there in the kitchen, wrapped up in one another until Clarke laughs, still watery, but at least her eyes aren’t quite as shadowed anymore.

“You know, when I thought to ask you about your tattoos, I didn’t really picture it going like this,” she says, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. Bellamy passes her a napkin and she murmurs her thanks. “We’re such a sob fest.”

“You’re the one who started it, princess.”

“Yeah, well, now I’m ending it. Crying makes me hungry.”

“Everything makes you hungry,” he says, fond, and Clarke sniffs, before saying in the haughtiest voice she could muster up, “I’m a growing girl,  _ Bellamy _ .”

“Yeah, yeah, go set the table. The pasta’s almost done.”

He doesn’t forget about their conversation-- he can’t forget something like that, the heaviness and sincerity of it all-- but the talk about tattoos does slip his mind for a bit. He has more important things to do, like work and convince Octavia that no, she should not buy a motorcycle.

He’s also been really into making his own pasta from scratch recently, a fact that Clarke teases him relentlessly for.

“I’m almost mad at how good these taste,” she tells him, spearing a raviolo with her fork. “You used  _ canned _ pumpkin puree.”

“It’s fall, we’re in October, pumpkin is  _ festive _ ,” he tells her, topping up her glass with some wine. She’s made a convert out of him, though Bellamy only drinks white wine at the moment. He still prefers beer though, but he keeps that little tidbit to himself. “You’re just mad I’m a better cook than you.”

“I’m mad because you made pumpkin ravioli and they taste  _ good _ .”

“I can’t believe you hate pumpkin.”

“It’s a cursed vegetable,” she mutters darkly, even as she cleans her plate of it.

“Technically it’s a fruit.”

“I will actually murder you.”

“Fun fact, the pumpkin is actually New Hampshire’s official state fruit.”

“Why do you even know this?” she asks, already wriggling her phone out of her back pocket to fact check him. “Also New Hampshire doesn’t count because it’s part of New England. New England is a godless land.”

“I thought Florida was the godless land.”

“All peninsulas are godless lands, Bellamy, keep up,” she snaps, before swearing and showing him her phone. “Fuck you’re right. It  _ is _ their state fruit. Why couldn’t it be something normal? Like apples. That’s a normal fruit.”

“Six states have apples listed as their official fruits,” he tells her and she rolls her eyes.

“Why do you even know so much about this?”

“Some guy got drunk at the bar the other night and told me about it. He also said that he would ‘bring back some plants’ for me, but I don’t know what he was talking about and frankly I was too scared to ask,” he says, taking a sip of his wine.

“It’s probably weed,” Clarke says solemnly as he starts to dish more ravioli onto her plate. There’s only three left in the pot and he’s not going to let it  _ waste _ .

“If he ever shows back up with it I’ll share my weed with you,” he promises and she nods.

“As you should,” she agrees before taking a giant bite of the pasta he just spooned on to her plate. “Fuck, this tastes so good, I hate you.”

“But you love pumpkin. Soon you might even get a tattoo dedicated to it,” he says with a jerk of his head towards her ankle where the pineapple tattoo lies.

“Joke’s on you, that tattoo was a bad decision I made because of my ex.” She’s smirking a bit, looking like she  _ knows _ that she surprised him with that back pocket trump card which, to be fair, she did.

He blinks, at a total loss for words for a moment, and then,

“You got a tattoo for your  _ ex _ ?” he guffaws, almost slapping his knee in mirth as he doubles over.

Clarke pouts. “It’s not funny, I was young and stupid.”

“Somehow I doubt that. The young part, not the stupid part.”

“Fuck you,” she says goodnaturedly as he starts to clear the table.

“Maybe later, princess, I just ate,” he snarks and she kicks him in retaliation. “Seriously, I want to hear this story.”

She gives him a wry smile. “You really wanna hear about my ex?”

“Well yeah,” he shrugs, “You told me that you didn’t date.”

“I don’t.”

“Not dating but still managing to have an ex?” He lifts one brow. “Impressive.”

Clarke huffs. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

“All I’m hearing is that this is a potentially embarrassing story that I’m going to milk for the foreseeable future.”

“Dick,” she says, fond.

Her hand traces over the tattoo on her ankle. The pineapple. The one Clarke said she gave herself with some needles and a pot of India ink and left him wondering how she hasn’t died from something like sepsis yet.

“Her name was Lexa,” she says softly, eyes cast downwards. “We met a few months after my dad died. She was getting her MBA.”

Clarke pauses to take a sip of wine, still not looking at him. Bellamy on the other hand couldn’t look away.

“She had a soulmate. Her mark was on her ankle,” she continues, “But she told me that she didn’t believe in any of that stuff, y’know? How it was all bullshit because how could the universe know what’s a good match for you? How does it know if your soulmate wouldn’t be a piece of shit. Statistically, a lot of soulmates end up getting divorced, did you know that? Because a lot of the time people jump head first into things, only to realise that that so-called perfect half isn’t that perfect after all.”

He slides back into his chair after putting their dishes in the sink to soak. “So you got a tattoo to match her soulmark?” he asks, propping his head up with his hand, “No offense but that’s dumb.”

“Fuck you, I was drunk,” she throws back at him and he laughs. “I still have my needles. Who knows, maybe I can give you a Clarke Griffin original one day. A little something to remember me by.”

He snorts. “As if you won’t be annoying me to the grave.”

“Shut up, you like it.”

“No comment.”

She kicks him in the shin again, hiding her smile, and he laughs in earnest this time.

“So. Lexa. Whatever happened to her? I’m assuming at some point you all broke up.”

The smile slowly dies and she busies herself with trailing a finger through the condensation that has accumulated on the sides of her wine glass. “Turns out she knew her soulmate the entire time and was just bitter that she moved,” she tells him with a feigned easiness.

“Dick,” he says plainly.

He can see her bite the inside of her cheek to stop from smiling. “Her name was Costia and a year before Lexa and I even met, she moved to Székesfehérvár.” She says the name of the place with the casual ease of someone having spent hours looking up everything about it. “Lexa was apparently applying to jobs there for when she was finished with her MBA and one of them got back to her.” She flashes him a wry grin. “She texted me from the airport and then a few days later sent me a pretty condescending email about how if I knew my soulmate I’d do the same thing and basically absolved herself of all guilt.”

“So calling her a dick was a  _ compliment _ .”

She giggles. “Maybe.”

He squeezes her forearm. “Shit Clarke, I’m sorry, that must have sucked.”

She shrugs, a jerky move of her shoulders. “It’s whatever. I’m over it now.”

The air around them is still a bit heavy and she’s decidedly not looking at him, her embarrassment evident in the faint flush of colour on her cheeks.

Bellamy tries to lighten the mood. “I still can’t believe you have a tattoo because of it,” he teases.

She smiles at him, grateful. “I thought about getting it removed but honestly, it serves as a good reminder,” she says, swirling the last of her wine around in the glass.

“Reminder for what?”

She drains the glass and he has to wait a moment for her to swallow before she says, “That even though she lied, she was right about one thing: soulmates  _ are _ bullshit and I hope I never meet mine.”

There’s a certain sort of vitriol in her voice that takes him aback for a moment.

But Bellamy has seen what losing her soulmate did to his mother. His own mark feels like an aching wound more often than something divine and over time he’s grown to resent the ink that blooms on his skin.

He of all people understands the vitriol and bitterness and hate when it comes to soulmates.

Even though her glass is empty, he still clinks his own against it. “I’ll drink to that,” he says, agreeing with her.

* * *

The end of October sees him rock climbing with Octavia and Lincoln-- who he’s grudgingly coming around too even though he’s  _ old _ \-- while Clarke cheers them on from the sideline. She says she’s afraid of heights but he’s pretty sure that if she had to do anything more than two miles on the treadmill for exercise she would like,  _ die _ . Of course, because he made her come watch them, that means he now  _ owes  _ Clarke, and she collects by making him dress up with her for Halloween. 

Apparently it’s a tradition of hers to make some sort of costume from scratch and carry enough candy to feed a small militia to the children’s hospital. This year she went with Rapunzel, actually buying several packs of blonde hair extensions from Amazon to make the braid, and she badgers him until he gives in and puts on the Flynn Rider costume she made for him.

“We look  _ adorable _ ,” she says as she makes him pose for what must be the hundredth picture that night. “My instagram is blowing up.”

“You do look good, Bell,” says his sister unhelpfully as she continues to snap photos of them. She also got roped into Clarke’s plans but she’s dressed up as Violet from the Incredibles because she’s going to a party later and, in her words, Violet is one of the few characters that can still be sexy while also being child appropriate. This means she’s wearing a tight, black bodysuit and Bellamy absolutely  _ refuses _ to look in her direction. He can’t. He might pop a blood vessel.

“I am going to steal that frying pan from you and give myself a concussion,” he tells Clarke, and she grins, dangerous and wild, completely at odds with her cutesy costume.

“Wait until we get to the hospital. Rapunzel actually knocks Flynn out  _ twice _ in the movie. I’ll be glad to do it for the kids. You know, staying true to the film and all that.”

He glares at her. “I hate you.”

Clarke just leans up and smacks a kiss to his cheek and Octavia catches the moment in a picture. Later that would be the picture she actually posts to her grid and not just her story and yes Bellamy, there’s a difference, she so haughtily tells him while gnawing on a caramel apple in her pyjamas from the couch.

October tumbles into November and with it comes the start of the cold-- the real cold-- which means that Clarke finally starts wearing more clothes.

During the start of fall she mainly wore camisoles with thick flannel shirts thrown over them, and Bellamy didn’t complain because that made it so easy when they were making out for him to just tug the neckline down and get his mouth on her tits. It’s fun to see just how riled up he can make her by just sucking on them.

But the real cold means that now Clarke has to dress in  _ layers _ and she  _ hates _ it.

“Cold weather is an abomination,” she sniffs, tugging the ends of her sleeves down so only her fingertips are visible. They’re at the bookstore, where Bellamy is working and Clarke is needling him to go on this lunch break because a new sandwich shop opened up a few blocks from her apartment and she wants company.

“Maybe you should move somewhere warmer then. Like Florida,” he muses as he shelves copies of some weird sixteenth century poetry about faeries. Even after working at the store for years and being the assistant manager, he couldn’t even begin to tell you what angle they were working with. They had everything from YA to children’s classics to latin poetry, a hodgepodge of interests, and Bellamy loves it.

Clarke scowls at him. “I thought we went over my hatred of Florida already. I will not go and live somewhere that has _Florida man_. The next person high off bath salts might try to eat _my_ _face_.”

“Then ask your mom to buy you a small Caribbean island. I’m sure she has the money for it.” Bellamy recently learnt that Clarke’s mother was a heart surgeon turned lobbyist and he teases her relentlessly about it.

Her scowl deepens. “That’s  _ neocolonialism _ , Bellamy. How dare you. I’m trying to pay for my forefathers’ sins over here.”

“My bad,” he says, dry, “Maybe you could pay for it by buying me lunch.”

“Well I would but you’ve been packing books for the last  _ twenty minutes _ ,” she grumbles.

“It’s called a job, princess,” he retorts, “Some of us have those. More than one of them in fact.”

“Yeah, capitalism is a real bitch, am I right?” she says, stealing a pen from his pocket and doodling little stick figures all over his inventory list.

“Oh yeah. Eat the rich,” he deadpans as he grabs his clipboard back from her and puts it on the top shelf, out of her reach. Clarke pouts, making grabby hands at it.

“Well,” she starts, thoughtfully, “I suppose if you’re eating  _ me _ then I can get on board.”

She cackles when he chokes on air.

They eventually do go to get lunch, and Clarke pulls out all of the green peppers from her sandwich and piles them onto his plate.

“I don’t understand why you couldn’t just tell them to hold the peppers,” he grumbles, even as he stuffs them into his own sandwich.

“Because I want their  _ flavour _ but I don’t want to  _ taste _ them.”

“Clarke what the  _ fuck _ does that mean.”

She brushes him off with a wave of her hand. “You’d understand if you were a picky eater.”

“As a whole twenty three year old woman you should not be bragging about being a picky eater. Not at this age.”

The next slice of green pepper hits him squarely in the middle of his forehead and Clarke pretends that she has no idea what’s going on when he glares at her.

After, when they’re sharing a slice of cake for dessert she asks him, “What do you have planned for Thanksgiving this year?”

“What happened to paying for the sins of your forefathers?” he teases. Clarke throws a withering stare his way and he chuckles. “I don’t know. It’s still a few weeks away. Usually O and I do the whole turkey thing at home. Why? You wanna join us?”

She shakes her head. “Nah, I usually go back home. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years are the few days a year I see my mom. I only asked because she emailed me this morning to confirm so she could schedule some time off.”

He scowls at nothing in particular. “She has to schedule time off to see her own  _ daughter _ ?”

She smiles without humour. “You know how it is.”

And the sad thing is that he did.

Clarke told him all about her tempestuous relationship with her mother at length. It all boils down to Abigail Griffin frowning at her daughter’s life choices because med school would have been so much better than becoming a graphic designer and digital illustrator. Clarke has  _ potential _ and she was just  _ wasting it _ . Bellamy thinks it’s all a load of garbage.

“If she has to schedule time to see you then I take it you’re probably not going to have the whole big fancy dinner thing.”

“No we still might,” she says, rolling her eyes. She drags her finger through the ring of condensation left on the table by her glass. “She has a  _ chef _ .”

Clarke’s not looking at him as she says this which he suspects she’s doing on purpose. Her admission gives him enough fuel for at least a dozen new princess jokes.

“Do you also have a butler? Mice that sew your dresses?”

“Haha, very fun,” she says. And then, quick, “She has a housekeeper, chauffeur and PA. I don’t even know what she needs a PA for but she has one.”

“Amazing. Is this what all rich people’s lives are like? Can I be  _ your _ PA?”

“Please, I’d fire you in a heartbeat.”

“Cheers, princess.”

He doesn’t see Clarke much during the month of November, maybe once a week at most. She has a lot of work projects going on with companies hiring her to design festive versions of their webpages to show off their new promotions. She has  _ meetings _ with people she barely knows in plain boardrooms with shitty coffee and she complains to Bellamy about it  _ all the time _ .

“You know, these days I feel like you complain to me about your job more than you actually do your job,” he tells her when she sneaks into the bathroom to call him on a break for what must be the third time that day. Bellamy’s lucky that he’s more or less his own boss at the bookshop when Pike’s not around so he doesn’t get in trouble, but he still sneaks into the stockroom so no one can see him. He has to set an  _ example _ , dammit.

“Shut up, you signed up to hear me complain.”

“I don’t recall doing that.”

“You said that we could provide some  _ stress relief _ for each other,” she reminds him, “And would you look at that. I’m stressed and complaining to you is helping me relieve it.”

“That’s honestly not what I had in mind,” he snorts, opening a few boxes that came this morning. It’s mostly new copies of some popular YA novels in preparation for the holiday season. “But if you come over this evening before I have to go to the bar I can definitely help you out with some  _ stress relief _ .”

“Charming.” He can practically hear the eye roll in her voice.

“I try.”

“And you call  _ me _ insatiable.”

“Go back to work, Clarke. You can’t hide in the toilets forever.”

“I can try,” she mutters darkly. “If I go back I might just murder Cage.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to bail you out if you do.”

“God, why do I even keep you around?”

“Come over later and I’ll remind you,” he leers into the darkness even though there’s no one there to see him.

“Just for that I won’t.”

“ _ Bye _ , princess,” he tells her before hanging up his phone.

Despite all of her talk from before, Clarke does show up at his apartment later that evening, just as he’s finishing up dinner. She has a paper bag in her hand with the logo from some fancy bakery on the front of it and Bellamy directs her to place it on the table before he backs her up against the counter and sinks to his knees.

He  _ did  _ promise her stress relief.

Once he’s satisfied with his efforts-- his knees are going to  _ kill him _ tomorrow for being kept in that position for upwards of thirty minutes-- Clarke is breathless and boneless, and she all about flows off the counter and on to the couch where she collapses in an effort to come back down to earth.

Bellamy is only a little smug as he washes his hands and face before taking out their food.

“So tell me about this Cage asshole,” he says as he flops down right next to her, holding their plates as well as two beers that she makes a face at.

Suddenly re-energised Clarke jumps right in. “God he’s the fucking worst. He’s a misogynistic douchebag who clearly only got his position because of nepotism and he spent the entire meeting undermining me…”

She talks quickly and animatedly, as though she’s been waiting  _ all day _ to tell him about it, even though she called him like four times with updates and sent a dozen texts. He has to bite back a smile at her enthusiasm.

Clarke leaves for Thanksgiving the Tuesday before the actual holiday to drive to DC. Her mother’s place was about two and a half hours away by car and Bellamy gave her a little brown bag of sandwiches for the trip.

“This is adorable,” she tells him and he ducks his head, shoving his hands into his coat pockets.

“Yeah, well, if left to your own devices you would probably subsist off of McDonalds,” he says, gruff.

She just grins at him. “I’ll text you when I get there.”

“Drive safe, princess.” He pats the hood of her car and watches as she takes off.

Clarke told him that he could stay in her apartment with Octavia while she’s gone if he wanted but he declined. He’s pretty sure if he showed up out of the blue and started sleeping in Clarke’s bed, his sister would have a  _ lot _ of questions. And quite frankly Bellamy does not want to have that conversation with his sister at all. So far his and Clarke’s shenanigans have gone undetected by their friends and even his sister hasn’t noticed. The only thing that Octavia had to say was that it was weird he was friends with her landlord, and Bellamy swiftly ended that conversation by flicking her forehead.

Besides, Lincoln invited Octavia to his family’s place for Thanksgiving dinner anyway and he would just feel weird staying over in an apartment that wasn’t his, alone.

So they just do lunch together, Bellamy coming over the morning of to cook, and Octavia helps out by taking charge of a few dishes. She makes the green bean casserole and pie, which is just a lot of chocolate pudding, whipped cream and hershey’s syrup, and he’s certain that they’re going to go into a sugar coma before the day is over.

“I am never letting you handle the dessert again,” he says when she unveils the monstrosity.

Octavia smears some of the whipped cream down the side of his cheek. “Shut up old man, it’s  _ Thanksgiving _ . Calories don’t count on this day.”

“Just know when you get diabetes in the next few years you have no one but yourself to blame.”

“Maybe I’m trying to kill you off with diabetes instead,” she says in an overly saccharine voice, “If you die, I get all your money.”

“Joke’s on you, you’re set to inherit nothing but crippling debt.”

His sister shuts him up by stuffing one of the decorative oreos from the top of the pie into his mouth and making him almost choke.

Bellamy leaves around four pm, roughly the same time Octavia starts getting ready for dinner with Lincoln’s family. He’s only a little bit bummed that they’re not spending the entire day together but he doesn’t show it. Back when his mom was still alive Thanksgiving and Christmas used to belong to them. She’d stay away from work and they’d watch the Charlie Brown special before binging whatever was showing on the Hallmark channel and then, after they had their dinner, they’d play monopoly until someone overturns the board in rage, usually Octavia. It’s still some of his fondest memories and even after she died he and O still tried to do all of that.

This was the first Thanksgiving ever that Bellamy found himself with no one to eat dinner with. It was kind of lonely.

Clarke calls when he’s having dessert, the smallest sliver of pie known to mankind and a cup of tea that was still steeping. They’ve been texting since she left but this is the first time that she’s called him and he can’t help the stupid little grin that immediately pastes itself on to his face when he sees his caller ID.

“Hi,” she says, a little breathlessly once he picks up.

“Hey princess.”

“How’s Thanksgiving?”

He shrugs even though she can’t see him. “Can’t complain. It’s been okay. Octavia went to Lincoln’s.”

“She left you alone?” Her frown manages to seep into the tone of her voice.

“We had lunch together, it’s fine.”

“Still.”

“Relax, Clarke, I’m okay,” he tells her, smiling a bit at her worry. It’s cute. “What about you? How’s DC?”

“Oh you know. It’s been fine. My mom hasn’t really been around that much which is fine by me. We just had dinner and I think now she’s getting ready for some sort of fancy social with some of her friends. So she’ll be leaving in a bit.” Clarke continues to tell him all about her time in DC, the conversations turned arguments she has with her mom, how the weather is somehow even  _ worse _ there in DC than it is in Arkadia, how the chef had a mishap with the turkey and almost burnt the entire thing.

There’s something about the cadence of her voice that finds soothing and soon his pie is finished and he’s left clutching his tea as he listens to her. He’s moved into the bedroom where his laptop is, and is scrolling through Netflix looking for something to watch that evening.

“So,” she starts after a pause, during which he was lazily sipping at his tea, “What are you wearing?”

The question makes him choke and Bellamy finds himself sputtering for a full minute or so while she laughs on the other end. “What the  _ fuck _ , Clarke,” he says when he can finally breathe again and he hears her responding giggle.

“Come on grandpa, you’re telling me that you’ve never had phone sex before,” she teases, and he can just imagine the smug little expression on her face. 

“Shut up, I just didn’t expect that,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “Isn’t your mom there?”

“I told you, she’s going out. She actually just left.”

“Ah, so you only made small talk until you were sure you had the house for yourself. Gotcha.”

They’ve hooked up more times that he can count in the three months that they’ve been doing this. Usually it’s just a hurried use of hands and mouths, never bothering to fully get undressed because nudity means intimacy and neither of them are willing to take that next step as yet, at least not right now. It doesn’t stop them from having sex though, usually it’s with her panties hastily pushed to the side so she can ride him on the couch or in her car. Although there was that one memorable time when she came back from meeting with a client wearing a sinfully tight dress and he bent her over the back of the sofa. It’s one of their more memorable times together, and it gets him half hard just by thinking about it.

Still, phone sex isn’t something they really do, not when their apartments are about twenty minutes away and she has a car and they’re both grown ass adults that can get off whenever they want.

“I’m just wearing your t-shirt and my underwear at the moment, fyi,” she tells him, and he can hear the coy smile in her voice.

“My shirt, huh? Which one?”

“The blue one.”

“Yeah, I realised it’s always missing,” he says, “You’re a little thief, princess.”

“It’s comfortable,” she defends herself, and he chuckles, voice low and muffled. “Here’s where you tell me what  _ you’re _ wearing. Come on Bellamy, help me out here a little bit.”

“Alright, alright,” he laughs. “I guess I’ll just ignore the fact that you’ve been plundering my closet because you’re  _ horny _ . I’m wearing sweatpants and a plain t-shirt.”

“Sweatpants? The grey ones?”

“Mhmm.”

“I love those.”

“I’ve realised.”

“You can google the implication of grey sweatpants later,” she tells him, her breath quickening a little. “Lose the shirt and tell me what you’d do if I was there.”

“I know how phone sex works, Clarke,” he says, a little mean, but he shucks the shirt anyway, leaning back on his bed.

“Yeah, well, you could have fooled me.”

“Shut up and take your shirt off,” he commands, gruff, listening to the rustling of fabric on the other end of the line, the hitch in her breath when she finally gets her hands on her skin. “You’ve got the most gorgeous tits I’ve ever seen, princess. Wish I was there to get my mouth on them.”

There’s a soft mewl from the other end of the phone and he feels the heat start to build in his core. “Fuck, I miss your hands,” comes Clarke’s voice, a little breathless.

He laughs, amused. “You saw me four days ago, you realise that, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Greedy girl,” he says but his tone is warm. “Come on, princess, tell me what you’re doing.”

“Just, ah, playing, with my tits. Waiting for you to tell me what else to do.”

“Waiting for me, huh.” He smirks. As much as Clarke likes to pretend to be in control when they hook up, she has a submissive streak a mile wide and nothing gets her hotter than when he’s manhandling her and telling her  _ exactly  _ what he has planned for them.

Bellamy’s always been pretty vocal during sex. He likes dirty talk and he knows for a fact that Clarke likes dirty talk too, the way she’s able to get worked up just by him saying a few choice words. He doesn’t even have to touch her to get her panties wet.

It’s no different now. Bellamy keeps up a steady stream of filthy things right by her ear, telling her how to pinch her nipples, the way to gently stroke herself first through her underwear and then on bare flesh and fuck, wouldn’t it feel so good if it was  _ his _ fingers that were buried in her cunt instead but I guess you gotta make use of your imagination, princess.

He ends up palming himself through his briefs for some relief about halfway through it, Clarke’s moans becoming too much for him to bear. He imagines her like this, lying back completely naked, legs splayed wide open, one hand on her breast while the other desperately fucks in and out of her cunt, her entire body flushed with desire. It’s enough to make him pull his cock out and start stroking it in earnest.

Clarke’s gasps and moans start getting louder and he coaxes her through her orgasm, his hand moving faster as he seeks his own release.

He tries to focus on that picture of her he’s created in his head, all desperate eyes and raw bottom lip, bruised from how hard she must have been biting down on it. He can feel the telltale signs of his orgasm building at the base of his spine.

Unbiddenly his mind adds another little detail to that picture, a soulmark directly on her ribs, a collection of dahlias and frangipanis and cherry blossoms, matching the one he has, and the Clarke in his mind traces its outline and moans.

He comes hard, the force of it almost blinding him for a second, and it takes a while for his heart rate to come back down.

“We should do that again sometime,” Clarke says, giggling a little and he grunts an affirmative, too blissed out to use actual words.

After, when the post-orgasm haze clears from his mind, Bellamy thinks back to  _ that _ specific thought that brought him over the edge.

He does not want to even begin to understand the implications behind it.

* * *

As soon as Clarke comes back, she jumps into the Christmas spirit.

She still complains about the cold, but now she’s wearing Christmas themed sweaters and clipping reindeer antlers in her hair and making snowflake chains that she drapes around the displays in the bookstore. Pike told her that it was cute one time and now she doesn’t want to stop.

“At the rate you’re going we’re going to have a paper shortage,” he grumbles, batting a line of them off of the register.

She sends a stray piece of his way and it hits him on the cheek. “I can’t believe you  _ hate Christmas _ .”

“I don’t  _ hate Christmas _ ,” he grumbles as he plucks the scissors out of her hands, “How did you even arrive at that explanation?”

“Because it’s  _ obvious _ . Where’s your Christmas cheer?”

“It’s barely even  _ December _ .”

Today Clarke’s sweater is red and white with alternating lines of reindeers and snowflakes. She has a matching beanie with a faux fur pom pom at the top and it jingles when she moves. It makes her look like an elf.

He gets an elbow to the gut when he points it out.

Her Christmas spirit doesn’t just stop at the store. She starts taking over his apartment too. Christmas was never really a big thing with the Blakes, not even when Aurora was still alive. Sure they had a small, fake tree and some pretty baubles and tinsel, but that was the extent of it since all the holiday did was remind them that they were too poor to get actual presents. Everything wrapped under the tree and stuffed into their stockings were practical items like new pants because his hem was several inches above his ankles or new sandals for Octavia because summer styles were two-for-one in the fall and winter.

Even after she passed Bellamy and Octavia never really did much. They got rid of the tree and had long outgrown the stockings and their only Christmas tradition was watching dumb Hallmark movies like  _ A Soulmate for Christmas _ , and drinking spiked eggnog even though she was still underaged.

But Clarke is adamant.

Slowly he begins to notice things here and there. A wreath on his front door, a set of nutcrackers on the shelf he leaves his keys, a nativity set on his coffee table, enough hot chocolate to last through two apocalypses and then some. She even hangs stockings on the mantle just below his tv. There are three of them, and Clarke hand painted their names onto the top of each one. Every time she visits, she leaves something in it for him to find. A candybar, a funny joke, a pair of socks. Soon he starts doing the same for her, leaving things like chapstick and mini bottles of hand cream and whatever else he finds in those little five dollar bins at Target.

“Is this going to be a thing?” he asks when he comes home one day to find her already there, arranging a centrepiece on his shitty little dining table. It’s a candle wrapped in some sort of greenery that’s decorated with glitter and acorns. He doesn’t understand what’s Christmas-sy about acorns but apparently that’s a running theme in most decorations.

The candle is lit and it makes his entire apartment smell like gingerbread.

“I won’t stop until you’ve embraced the Christmas spirit,” she tells him, pointing a lighter threateningly towards him.

He snorts. “Clarke, if I didn’t embrace the Christmas spirit then I would have thrown out all this shit a week ago.” 

“So you’re saying that I should cancel the jumbo sized candy canes I ordered then?”

“You are ridiculous,” he says, tugging on her hair so that her antlers become lopsided. Clarke squawks and bats his hands away, glaring at him.

Her apartment is no different, looking like Santa’s workshop with all the lights and decorations and garlands she bullied him into helping her put up. It’s not really all that surprising since he realised just how hard Clarke is willing to go for the holiday, but what  _ does _ surprise him is that Octavia seems fine with all of it.

“You’re seriously okay with this?” he asks, squinting at her. She is sprawled out on the couch with her feet propped up on the table as she mindlessly scrolls through Netflix. She’s wearing tiny little snowman earrings and Bellamy wants to take a picture but he knows that Octavia would probably smack his phone out of his hand before he could even unlock it.

“Yeah, she made it sound cool,” she says, obnoxiously munching on some chips. Bellamy worries about them getting ants. “She’s even letting me plan a Christmas party. You’re bartending by the way.”

“Gee thanks. I love doing my job when I have time off from my job.”

“Shut up, as if you’d let anyone else do it. You have a control problem.”

“I do not have a  _ control problem _ ,” he huffs.

“Yeah you do. Anyway it’s the Saturday before Clarke leaves to go by her mom. Tell Miller and the rest of your dumb friends they’re invited,” she says as she finally selects a show to watch. He thinks it’s about high schoolers but there’s also murder so he can’t be too sure. It’s a CW show so it’s not like quality is a huge deal there.

Later, after Octavia leaves to go study for finals with some friends, Bellamy slumps down on a chair next to Clarke and very carefully knocks his shoulder into hers. She’s working on her Christmas cards, the ones that she makes by hand as opposed to design on the computer. Last time he disturbed her while she was in the middle of it, she almost fucked up the lettering and Clarke went into graphic detail of what she’d do to him if that happened again. Safe to say he’s learnt his lesson. 

“So, Christmas,” he starts, watching as she finishes the greeting on the card with a flourish. “What’s your deal with it?”

She quirks a brow. “My deal?”

“Come on, princess, your deal,” he says, pressing closer to her, “I know you. You always have a reason for things. Surely you’re obsessed with Christmas for a  _ reason _ .”

Clarke bites down on her lip and drops her eyes and then, “My dad,” she admits, “It was his favourite time of the year. He used to hang up the lights and build model trains that went around the entire sitting room and have the house picture perfect ready by the time December first rolled around. After he died, I didn’t-- it didn’t… I couldn’t do it. It didn’t feel the same. But it’s what he would have wanted and some of my favourite memories are with him during Christmas time so. I do all of this.”

Bellamy says nothing and she gnaws on a hangnail, nervous.

“That was stupid, I know--”

“It’s not stupid,” he cuts her off, smiling gently, “That’s-- that’s really nice Clarke.”

She ducks her head, blushing. “Thank you.”

“I guess that makes your collection of elf outfits a little bit more tolerable.”

“ _ Elf outfits _ ?” she sputters, “They’re not elf outfits, they’re just festive, Bellamy Blake. It’s not my fault I’m not the Grinch like some people.”

She actually seems offended and he grins, scooting out of reach, away from her bony fingers that are able to find the most sensitive spots of his body and inflict the most pain.

“Whatever you say, princess.”

Octavia’s Christmas party turns into his the more time he spends with her. His sister has never been a planner, much preferring to delegate tasks and get others to do the work for her. This time is no different.

The guestlist is just their groups of friends and he already appointed himself in charge of the food and drinks. Clarke said she would help him out with that, plus she had several Spotify playlists full of Christmas music ready to go. Between the two of them they were able to sort out everything in time for the party and Clarke even goes one step further by getting them matching Christmas hats.

The only thing that his sister seems to have done was taping mistletoe over every single doorway in the house.

“Don’t you think that that’s a bit of overkill?” he asks when she’s finally done making out with Lincoln by the front door.

“Don’t you think your face is a bit of overkill,” she snarks back at him and he frowns.

“That doesn’t even make any sense!” he calls out, exasperatedly, as she leads her boyfriend to her room and Bellamy adamantly does not want to think about it.

Guests start pouring in around lunch time and Clarke is busy playing hostess, offering drinks and snacks to everyone while he makes sure everything is set and ready to go in the kitchen. They make a good team like that.

From his vantage point in the kitchen he’s able to watch as one by one all of their friends get caught underneath all the mistletoe Octavia has hanging around the place. There’s Raven and Harper, Murphy and Emori, Monty and Harper. Even he and Miller get caught and the other man dramatically rolls his eyes before dipping Bellamy into a quick, wet kiss.

“You slobbered all over me,” Bellamy says, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

Miller throws an arm around his boyfriend, the two of them sitting on the couch together, and smirks. “Don’t act as though I totally didn’t just rock your world, Blake.”

“Yeah, you wish.”

All of their friends find themselves laughing, and soon it becomes a game to see who can collect the most mistletoe kisses. The apartment is already a minefield, with any wrong step sending you hurtling towards someone’s awaiting lips. Bellamy grumbles about the risk of them catching mono, but it goes completely ignored. Murphy is the one currently in the lead after planting one on Lincoln, and Bellamy is more than fine with staying cooped up in the kitchen.

It figures though that when he eventually leaves his safe space, he immediately ends up underneath a sprig of mistletoe with Clarke.

Reflexly he finds himself scowling at the stupid shrub and he hears his sister cackling behind him.

“Come on, Bellamy,” she goads him, “Rules are rules.”

“It’s a plant, it can’t make rules.” He vaguely wonders if he could set it on fire using one of the lit candles.

“You know what I mean, dumbass. You gotta follow tradition. You telling me that you’d kiss Miller but not Clarke?” his sister asks, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah Bellamy, think of my feelings,” Clarke says, a sparkle in her eye. She looks amused by the whole thing. He throws a withering glare her way and her grin just widens.

“You’re all ridiculous,” he announces before he cups her jaw and leans in and kisses her.

As far as kisses go, this one is quite chaste, just a dry press of mouths that’s barely a second long, but his thumb still brushes the curve of her cheek and Clarke flashes him a soft smile when he pulls away.

The rest of their friends catcall and whoop like they’ve been doing all evening, except for Octavia who’s watching him with a calculating look. Bellamy hastens to step away from Clarke and jams his hands in his pockets to quit touching her.

He keeps his distance from her for the rest of the night, which is remarkably easy to do when there’s about a dozen other people in the apartment, each of them varying levels of drunk.

The party winds down close to midnight and Bellamy stays back to help Clarke clean up. Octavia has conveniently disappeared.

“You can stay over, you know,” she tells him as he sweeps the last bit of popcorn into the dustpan. He doesn’t even know where the popcorn came from because they clearly didn’t make any, and yet there were popcorn garlands looped around her Christmas tree.

Clarke worries her lip. “The couch pulls out. Or,” she ducks her head, clearly embarrassed with what she’s about to say, “You could sleep with me. If you want to.”

He takes a pause at that.

“I’ll take the couch,” he says slowly. “Octavia is already suspicious enough as is.”

“You mean from the kiss?” she snorts. Her cheeks are still a bit red and she’s clearly trying to move past the fact that he more or less just turned her down. “You kissed Miller.”

“Yeah but she’s my  _ sister _ ,” he says dryly, “She has an uncanny ability of finding out who I actually like.”

“So you like me, huh?” she says, sly, nudging him with her elbow and he laughs a little.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I’ll go make up the couch while you take the trash out,” she tells him, ignoring the slight jab he throws her way.

Bellamy does just that, taking two trips to lug all the bags to the dumpster behind her building. When he comes back, she already has the sofa set up for him and she’s changed out of her candy striped dress and Santa hat into pyjamas, just a pair of long pants and a tank top.

“I have a pair of your old joggers and a few t-shirts in my room,” she says, blushing a little as she admits that. “If you want to change that is.”

“I almost forgot that you steal my clothes,” he says easily, following her into the bedroom. He’s been in here a couple of times with her, but the place always feels too intimate for what they’re doing, just two friends helping the other scratch an itch.

“I don’t steal your clothes, shut up,” she grouses as she heads towards her closet to find them. “And besides, it comes in handy for times like these.”

Bellamy catches hold of her arm before she can get too far and spins her around.

He presses her up against the bureau, kissing her deep and slow, the kind of kiss that he wanted to give her earlier today. Clarke lets her fingers tangle in his hair and licks at the seam of his mouth. She tastes minty from the toothpaste.

“I would have stayed in your bed,” he murmurs, their noses brushing together, “If my sister wasn’t here.”

Clarke bites her lip. “I’m leaving in the morning,” she breathes, rubbing her body suggestively against his. “Octavia probably won’t be up until like, noon.”

“You make a good point,” he hums, busy kissing down the side of her neck. 

“Well that’s me,” she says, gasping a little when his stubble grazes against that sensitive spot beneath her ear. “Chock full of good ideas.”

“Stop talking, princess.”

They don’t do much other than makeout for a little bit there in her bedroom. He slots a knee between her legs to give her something to grind down on while they kiss, but they’re both too exhausted from the events of the day to do much of anything else.

Bellamy takes a shower to wash off the grime and the sweat associated with hosting a party and when he comes out, he finds a pair of joggers and his old blue t-shirt that she took with him back to DC for Thanksgiving sitting on top of the toilet lid. It smells like her when he holds it up to his nose and inhales.

He brushes his teeth quickly with the toothbrush she put next to the sink for him, and when he finally emerges from the bathroom, Clarke’s lounging on her bed, scrolling through her phone.

She smiles at him when he walks in, and pats the empty space next to her on the bed. 

He hitches a brow. “I thought we agreed that I’d take the couch?”

“Come on, just for a little while,” she says, pushing the heavy duvet down. “It’s not like Octavia is gonna barge in.”

“You clearly don’t know how nosy my sister can be,” he mutters darkly, but climbs in next to her nonetheless.

Clarke ends up showing him some pieces that she’s working on at the moment, both for her clients and her own personal work, and then they makeout some more, just a lazy slide of lips over each other. He gets her off, or rather, Clarke gets herself off by grinding against his leg and panting into his mouth. It’s a struggle for her to stay quiet, but she manages.

“Just because I’m not going to see you until  _ next year _ ,” she murmurs sleepily after he rolls her off of him and tucks her into bed. He’s definitely hard from all of that, her choked off sounds, the face she makes when she comes, but Bellamy’s certainly not going to make her reciprocate when she’s already half asleep.

“Whatever you say, princess,” he says before he drops a kiss to her forehead and makes his way back out to the living room where she made up the pull out for him.

Clarke does end up leaving before Octavia wakes up, and he makes her breakfast before she gives him a ride back to his apartment. She pecks him on the cheek when he tells her to call him when she gets there, to let him know that she arrived in one piece. It’s snowing and the roads are slick.

He mostly hangs around his apartment during his downtime. His sister invites him out for ice skating with her friends but he ends up dipping after the first hour. Gaia and Echo are nice enough, he supposes, even if Echo stares at him enough to make him feel uncomfortable.

Christmas with the Blakes has always been a lowkey affair. Bellamy stays the night in Clarke’s apartment on the couch just so Octavia could continue her tradition of belly flopping onto him at 6am so they could open presents.

She gives him an encyclopaedia of ancient Rome. 

“Because you’re a giant nerd lord,” she says, pinching his arm, and Bellamy retaliates by tugging hard on her tangled braid.

She squeals when she sees her present though, some sort of fancy hair dryer she’s been wanting for months now, and immediately runs off to wash her hair, leaving Bellamy to deal with clean-up and seeing about breakfast. He sends Clarke a text while he’s at it, but he doesn’t expect her to reply until much later. It’s barely seven in the morning.

He bought a present for her too, just some paints and a copy of that one art history book he caught her looking at back in the shop a few weeks before. They’re wrapped already so he leaves it on her bed as opposed to under the tree for her to find when she comes back.

The rest of the day is spent lazing around the place, watching Christmas movies and sitting in the living room, not talking, the two of them on their phones.

Clarke calls him around noon while Octavia is on the balcony talking to Lincoln.

“Hey, princess,” he answers, “How’s DC?”

“Annoying,” she grumbles, “My mother has me going to all of these  _ events _ with her. A bunch of dinners and lunches and  _ festivities,  _ as if I care about politics.”

She’s been texting him about her frustration of it all ever since she got there, her mother making her go out for drinks with some of her colleagues the same evening she arrived. But it’s clear that she doesn’t think she complained to him enough, because Clarke is telling him  _ everything _ , from the awkward dinner with the Wallaces to some sort of charity event hosted by Second Dawn which she’s pretty sure is a cult. Bellamy lounges across the sofa and just listens to her speak, interjecting ever so often to offer his point of view or a succinct comment or agree that yes Clarke, Cage Wallace is still a shitbag.

“You got anywhere to go today?” he asks after she finishes up a story about horrifying a very conservative lobbyist last night by mentioning her ex girlfriend.

“Nah it’s Christmas. It’s a time for  _ family _ .” He can picture her rolling her eyes as she says the word. “Needless to say I’ve only seen my mom this morning for half an hour at breakfast where we exchanged presents.”

“Ah, and what did you get for Christmas, princess? A new pony? Diamond encrusted tennis bracelet?”

“Haha, very funny,” she says acerbically. And then after a quick pause she mumbles, “It was a  _ pearl _ necklace.”

Bellamy almost falls off the couch laughing.

“It’s honestly not that funny,” she grumbles when he’s catching his breath.

“It honestly kind of is.”

She huffs. “If you keep being mean to me I’m not going to tell you where to find your presents.”

His ears perk up and he immediately stops laughing, sitting up straight. “You bought me a present? Wait,  _ presents _ ? As in more than one?”

“Well I’m filthy rich, aren’t I?” she says wryly. “Gotta spend it somewhere.”

“...I’m not going to say a  _ word _ .”

It takes her a minute to understand what he’s implying but when she does, “Ew, Bellamy! Gross!”

“I didn’t even say anything!”

“You thought it.”

“You a mind reader now?”

“Shut up. Go to my room, I’ll tell you where to find the gifts,” she directs him and he does just that.

It turns out that before she left, Clarke planned out an entire  _ scavenger hunt _ for him in order to get to his presents. He honestly doesn’t know when she found the time to do that since he was here with her that last night here in the apartment. It’s a challenge too, with her calling out cryptic clues for him to decipher. He doesn’t know why she couldn’t just put it under the Christmas tree like she did with Octavia’s and when he points this out, Clarke tells him it’s because his sister isn’t nearly as insufferable as him which. Well that’s just simply not  _ true _ .

The game probably lasts all of ten minutes before he finds his presents; a pasta roller in her drawer of hair instruments, a second edition annotated copy of the  _ Iliad _ tucked between the sheets of the linen closet, and a bottle of expensive cologne hidden at the back of her pantry amongst all the expensive alcohol.

Octavia had wandered back inside while he was on the phone with Clarke, laughing and cursing at her, and she watched him intently as he searched for his gifts.

As soon as he hangs up the phone she pounces on him. “What’s going on with you and Clarke?” she asks, cocking her head to the side.

He freezes for a brief second and then says, “Nothing, we’re just friends.”

“Right,” she drawls, “Friends.”

“Boys and girls can be friends, O,” he says, tugging on her braid to annoy her, “Don’t be weird.”

She slaps his hand away. “I know that, but somehow you and Clarke don’t strike me as  _ just friends _ .”

She looks at him, scrutinising, and he does his best to keep his face impassive while he tries to go through every single moment that he and Clarke demonstrated a less than  _ platonic _ relationship in this apartment. They usually keep their hookups confined to his place, but they have been known to let things get out of hand and hands get into things while they’re here.

When she realises that he isn’t going to say anything further, she points out, “You kissed her at the Christmas party.”

“I also kissed Miller.” He arches an eyebrow. “You gonna tell me I have feelings for him next?”

“Interesting that you were the one to bring up  _ feelings _ ,” she muses.

He flicks her forehead. “You changed your major to psychology or something when I wasn’t looking?”

“I’m just pointing out the facts.”

“Okay, so what, I kissed her. Still doesn’t mean anything.”

“She  _ looks _ at you sometimes,” she tells him. “And laughs at your dumb nerd jokes.”

“Oh my god, and she  _ talks _ to me too.” He rolls his eyes. “It’s almost as though I’m a likeable person.”

She aims a kick at his knee and he winces a bit when it lands squarely on his patella. “That’s debatable. You’re a dick.”

“You can’t call people dicks, O, that’s rude.”

“Yeah but you’re not people.”

“That’s doubly rude.”

“You have a soulmate, Bellamy,” she says suddenly, quietly, and not looking at him. “Somewhere out there there’s someone made just for you. Don’t hurt them or Clarke by doing whatever this is.”

The words hang in the air between them. Bellamy feels as though someone has poured a bucket of cold water over his head.

“Look, O,” he scrubs a hand down his face, suddenly weary. “Clarke’s my friend. She’s cool and we like hanging out together. That’s it. Nothing else. I don’t  _ like _ her.”

He frowns, the taste of the lie heavy on his tongue.

She gives him one last weighted look before dropping the topic completely, jabbering on instead about their plans for New Years Eve, some new exclusive club that she managed to get them in but Bellamy isn’t really listening.

It’s never been like this before. He’s always been fine with lying to his sister about his hookups, but a part of him acknowledges that what he’s doing with Clarke is more than just a hookup.

She’s probably more than just a friend too. He likes her. Probably more than just likes her if he’s being honest, but Bellamy has never liked being completely honest with himself, especially when it comes to things like this.

The lie is bitter acid that’s clawing at his insides and staining his mouth, lingering for hours to come.

* * *

_ Nightblood _ is a new club that opened just a few months ago downtown and, according to Octavia, it’s notoriously difficult to get into.

So of course his sister went and got him and all of their friends on the list for the New Years Eve party. Apparently the club is owned by one of Echo’s cousins, Ontari or something of the sort, and she pulled in a favour.

Bellamy is still wary of Echo. He doesn’t like to judge his sister’s friends but there’s something about her that makes his skin crawl. He’s not sure if it’s because she mentioned having three snakes as pets back home and then showed him a video of her feeding them live mice, or if it’s the fact that she has some rather questionable opinions and says things like ‘all lives matter.’

Whatever it is, Bellamy does not want to have anything to do with her.

He’s not a huge fan of going out for New Years Eve. While he doesn’t find anything wrong with a little chaos, that night is always another level of disaster with too loud crowds and too drunk people. At least he’s not working for it this year. Working in the service industry on New Years Eve should have been one of Dante’s circles of hell.

But his sister and all of his friends are going so Bellamy sucks it up and goes with them. He tries to complain to Clarke about it, but she just sends him the old man shaking his fist at the sky meme, no help at all.

The club is nice though, not quite as crowded or loud as he thought it would be though the drinks are ridiculously expensive. He grumbles to Octavia how he could mix all of their drinks for just a quarter of the price and he gets an elbow to the stomach in return.

He meets a guy named Roan, another cousin of Echo’s but not nearly as weird, when he’s trying to hide from her. There’s about twenty minutes left until midnight and he wants to be as far, far away from her as possible.

He ends up making out with Roan when the clock strikes twelve, and after months of kissing no one but Clarke it feels weird. Roan is all hard muscle and scruff that scratches against his skin as he kisses him, demanding and pushy. He’s nothing like Clarke, who’s all soft curves and soft skin, a brat who likes being manhandled at times.

The kiss ends, but not before Echo finds them, and she makes a face, grumbling about how all the hot ones are always gay. Bellamy doesn’t bother to correct her.

Roan quirks a brow, a silent question about if he wants more, and Bellamy shakes his head, having enough for the evening. He feels strangely guilty about the kiss even though he and Clarke never specified if they were exclusive. And then he feels guilty for comparing the two of them.

He leaves him and heads back to his friends, taking the shot Murphy passes him and letting Octavia wrap her arms around him in order to smack a sloppy kiss to his cheek.

“Happy new year, big brother,” she slurs, clinging to his shoulders like a koala. He gently pries her off and force feeds her a bottle of water.

About an hour or so later he finds himself in the bathroom and he remembers to check his phone.

There are two missed calls from Clarke and he immediately feels incredibly guilty.

He decides to call her back and she picks up on the third ring.

“Hey,” she says, soft, and he can picture the sleepy little smile on her face. “Happy new year.”

“Happy new year, princess,” he whispers back to her and she giggles.

“You sound as though you’re having a good time,” she teases. “Thought you didn’t want to go to the club.”

“I didn’t.”

“But you’re having fun.”

“...Maybe.”

She giggles again. “So, anyone kissed you at midnight?” she asks, conversationally.

For a second he thinks about lying to her, pretending that Roan never happened. But he can’t do that, not to Clarke, so he tells her the truth instead, and when she’s silent for a beat too long he adds on, “I would’ve kissed you if you were here though.”

She sucks in a surprised breath.

Bellamy changes the subject.

“What about you? How’d you ring in the new year?” he asks, turning the tap on so he could wet his hands and rub them down his face. He’s not drunk, not really, but he’s definitely passed tipsy.

“Home. Alone. Staring up at the stars,” she says, “I left the party early. Rang it in with a glass of cranberry juice on my patio and pretending my dad could hear me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

The door to the bathroom bangs open and he jumps, almost dropping his phone in the sink. When he manages to get a good grip on it once more Clarke is there saying, “I should go. Leave you to your fun.”

“I’m leaving here soon anyway,” he blurts out. The prospect of spending the rest of the night talking to Clarke on the phone instead of dancing with strangers and drinking more alcohol than he should is far more enticing. “I can call you when I get back home.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Another pause in the conversation and he wonders if he should hang up.

“Bellamy,” Clarke says, sounding nervous all of a sudden.

“Hmm?”

“If you were here I’d kiss you too.” She says it all in a rush, on a single breath, and he finds himself smiling, ducking his head as his cheeks warm.

“I’ll call you in a bit, princess,” he promises, and then they hang up.

He thinks his sister is too drunk to understand what he says when he tells her that he’s leaving, and he gives Lincoln a stern look to take care of her.

Their group took a couple of Ubers to the club earlier that night and that’s what he does now to get home. Once there, he downs two glasses of water and takes a quick shower before hopping into bed. It’s already past 2 a.m. but when he calls Clarke she picks up on the first ring.

“I’m home,” he tells her, a bit unnecessarily, “Safe and sound.”

“That’s good.”

He blames the last bit of alcohol that’s in his system when he says, “I miss you,” eyes closed and words just barely over a whisper.

“I miss you too,” she replies, just as quiet.

They let it hang there, savouring it for a moment.

“Tell me about your night,” he says to her and Clarke is more than happy to comply, telling him about everything, from the food to the drinks to the horrid outfits and the man she saw kissing her mother even before it was midnight.

Bellamy drifts off to the sound of Clarke’s voice on the phone, his lips curled into a contented smile.

When he wakes up the next day his phone is dead and there’s a dull pounding in the back of his head. He just groans and dry swallows two ibuprofen before drawing his curtains all the way closed and heading back to sleep.

He’s awoken three hours later by the rumble of his stomach and he makes himself a greasy breakfast before gathering up some clothes to do laundry. His mother always said that he shouldn’t start the new year with a dirty house so he throws some clothes in the wash and changes his sheets before giving the whole place a quick vacuum. 

While his things are drying he unplugs his phones from the charger and scrolls through his messages. There’s a lot from Octavia, mostly incoherent sentences and blurry pictures, a couple from his friends and coworkers wishing him a happy new year, and some from Clarke saying that her mother forced her out to brunch before they go to another dinner this evening and that she’d call him later.

He’s just finished washing his dinner wares when there’s a knock at the door and he frowns.

It’s just past ten and he honestly doesn’t know who it could be. Octavia is too hungover to leave her place and has been begging him to bring her Gatorade, the purple kind because it’s the best, all day. Miller usually calls before he shows up and anyway, he said that they were going to spend the day with Jackson’s parents the next town over. Murphy hasn’t responded to his texts at all so he’s probably dead in a ditch somewhere.

Bellamy dries his hands on the kitchen towel and ambles over to check it.

He’s not sure what he expected but it’s certainly not Clarke, wringing her hands together as she gnaws on her bottom lip. He stares at her and she offers him a tentative smile. Before she left she told him that she would drive back down on the Friday after New Years, which was still two days away.

She’s wearing a pretty dress, something made out of red, shiny fabric that has a fairly modest neckline and hits her right at the knees. She’s wearing stockings with it too, and heels. Her hair is pulled back in a classy twist and she’s wearing makeup which he’s pretty sure he’s never seen her do before. The red stain on her lips is a little bit distracting.

He blinks, just to make sure he’s not seeing things.

“Clarke?”

She smiles up shyly at him. “Hey Bellamy.”

“Since when do you know how to knock?”

“Rude.” She’s still grinning at him. And then, “Since I left my keys to your place back in my apartment.”

“I didn’t expect you back so early.” He’s suddenly conscious of the fact that he’s been living off of leftovers for the past few days and there’s a suspicious stain on the front of his shirt that he can’t figure out how it got there. “Uh, do you want to come inside?”

“Nah I just figured I’d hang in your hallway. The musty carpet and smell of weed really does it for me,” she snarks, though she does tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, one of her nervous tells.

“Glad to see you’re still a dick,” he says, feeling far less bashful now. He doesn’t even know why he felt that way in the first place. It’s just Clarke after all.

He steps aside to let her in and she immediately kicks off her heels in the hallway, sighing in relief. Bellamy heads to the kitchen, puttering around and getting two mugs of hot chocolate ready.

“I did laundry today,” he calls out, and she just grunts, switching paths from his bedroom to the bathroom, snapping the door shut with a click.

He’s already sprawled out on the couch by the time she comes back out, having ditched the dress for a pair of sweatpants and one of his t-shirts. She chucks the pretty dress in the direction of her shoes and then wedges herself under his arm.

His heart always stutters a bit when she gets like this-- soft and grumpy and tactile; truly Clarke and not one of the many masks she likes to wear.

He drops a kiss on her forehead and she just snuggles closer to him. “How come you’re back so early?”

She stiffens a bit at his question, but when his thumb rubs against the knob of her shoulder she relaxes, leaning against him.

“My mom dragged me to this thing and I just, I don’t know, I realised I didn’t want to be there anymore,” she shrugs, wrapping the strings of the sweatpants around her finger until it turned purple and then unravelling it again. “It’s just a bunch of stuffy rich people rubbing shoulders and discussing lobbyist strategies and being all ‘ _ oh so you’re Abby’s daughter. The one who dropped out of med school to pursue the arts _ .’ I felt gross being there.”

“I feel gross just hearing about it,” he says as he represses a shudder. “They really know you as the one who dropped out of med school?”

“Yeah, my mom’s a real charmer. Even funnier when you realise I never applied to any medical schools in the first place,” she snorts. “Anyway, I ended up stealing a bottle of champagne, ditching, and grabbing all my shit from my mom’s place so I could come back here.”

His heart gives a pathetic little flop that her first thought after running away was to come and see him.

“Honestly, that was probably a good call,” he says, absentmindedly tracing the tiny solar system that follows the curve of her collarbone, “You might have insulted some rich bigshot if you stayed there any longer and next thing you know you’re gonna be seeking refuge in Iceland or something.”

“God, I would have, wouldn’t I?” she grins, “Speaking of, I have a bottle of insanely expensive champagne in my car trunk and like, fifty missed calls from my mother telling me that she’s taking me off the will or something. Wanna get drunk?”

Bellamy squints down at her, trying to figure out if she was joking not. “Would she really do that?”

“Abby Griffin is not to be trifled with.”

“Well, if she ever did, the fuck her. You don’t need that kind of bullshit in your life.”

He sounds a bit too impassioned for what was meant to be a joke and Clarke picks up on it. She lifts her eyebrows. “No?”

“Course not,” he shrugs, blushing a little. “You have me, what else could you want?”

He means to play it off as another wisecrack of course, trying to get a laugh out of her, but instead Clarke just softens and she gives him this  _ look _ .

“You’re right,” she tells him, tenderly, reaching up to cup his face, “I do have you.”

She tugs him down and he goes willingly, slanting his mouth over hers, the kiss wet and deep and heady. It’s a tangle of limbs, and they’re both pressed close on his shitty couch, so close that he can’t tell where he ends and she begins, but he doesn’t care, not when he has the taste of her on his tongue, or the feel of her, all warmth and softness, perched in his lap after what felt like months apart but was really just a few weeks.

They don’t do anything more than make out until their mouths are numb, not even when her hips slip directly into the cradle of his, or when she whines softly into his mouth, causing him to bite a little too hard at her lips.

Her hair is a halo of gold around her head, lips bruised and kiss bitten. A slow, easy smile unfurls across her face, and she doesn’t move back, doesn’t even shift an inch, staying pressed chest to chest with him, arms looped around his shoulders as she nestles her face in the crook of his neck.

Bellamy feels a dull throbbing ache behind his sternum and  _ oh _ , this is the kind of heartbreak no one ever tells you about, the kind where you can have everything in the palm of your hands, but it’s not yours for the taking.

He loves her.

It’s not necessarily a grand revelation, in fact, it’s not a revelation at all. Bellamy’s been in love with her for a while. He stumbled into it, slid gradually down the path when she forced her way into his life and stubbornly stuck there. It’s heartbreaking and all consuming at the same time.

He kisses her harder until she gasps in his mouth, until she moans his name, the sound of it sweet on her tongue.

They fall asleep together tangled on his couch and Bellamy wakes up with several kinks in his neck, but none of that matters when he has Clarke Griffin in his lap looking up at him with a smile brighter than the fucking sun.

Clarke leaves to go back to her own apartment late the next morning but just a couple hours later, when Bellamy’s trying and failing to get some work done, she texts him.

It’s a picture of a bottle of champagne with some french name that he can’t understand. She quickly follows that with a message that reads,  _ i still have this in my bag. wanna come over and help me drink it? _

He grins and texts her the affirmative while putting his shoes on.

Octavia isn’t there when he arrives, and he assumes that she’s by Lincoln, which is all well and fine because Clarke answers the door in a pair of silk sleep shorts trimmed in lace and a tank top with one of his flannel shirts thrown over her shoulders. She grins up at him and he’s pretty sure his brain short circuits.

“I already ordered take out,” she tells him as he pulls off his shoes in the entryway, “Because I figured we’re going to be too shitfaced to want to actually cook anything.”

He lifts a brow. “Shitfaced from just one bottle of champagne? Come on princess, I know you have better tolerance than that.”

Her grin just widens. “Oh I do, but I was talking about Monty’s Christmas present for me.” She jerks her head over to the kitchen where there’s a pan of brownies open on the stove. It takes a second for things to work out in his mind but when they do he barks out a laugh.

“Clarke Griffin, your such a fuckin’ lush,” he says, fond, and drops a quick kiss to her cheek.

“Champagne and special brownies, don’t say I never treat you right,” she teases him.

They end up on the balcony, sprawled out on a thick blanket because Clarke doesn’t have any furniture out here. There’s a veritable spread between them, cartons of Chinese take out, a platter of brownies, and a bottle of champagne. She yelped when he popped it open, and Bellamy poured it directly into her mouth, forgoing glasses as they settled on swapping the bottle back and forth. 

It’s cold out, even in the evening sun, and it’s obvious that she’s not wearing a bra. Her nipples are hard, only covered by the thin material of her tank top and his mouth is aching for something sweet.

“This is nice,” she hums, leaning against him a little as she nibbles on what must be her third brownie of the evening. He doesn’t know how she’s doing that. Bellamy just had one and a bit and he already feels blissed out, limbs heavy and slow as though he’s moving through molasses.

He presses his face against the side of her head and breathes in deeply. She smells fresh and clean, the usual floral scent that lingers around her somehow even headier than usual.

He blames the alcohol and the weed for the way his hands wander across her body, trailing over her legs, skimming across her stomach, nail catching on a nipple through the flimsy fabric. Her hips shift, searching, and he lets his smile curl into a smirk.

“Bet I can make it nicer,” he whispers to her, tracing the lace edge of her shorts. They’re baby pink, barely covering her ass, and he knows she must be freezing. Hell, even he’s feeling cold and he’s wearing a turtleneck and jeans.

She sucks in a shaky breath when his fingers inch up her thighs, barely grazing her centre through her shorts, and her legs unconsciously fall open wider. “Please,” she murmurs, turning her head to the side for a clumsy kiss.

“You want this now, princess?” he asks, continuing to tease her with gentle caresses that do nothing but stroke the want building inside of her. “Right here, where anyone can see?”

The apartment is on the fourth floor of the building, which is high enough that people on the street can’t see her balcony all that well, but they’re surrounded by taller buildings with lots of glass windows and other balconies that jut out. Anyone could be watching, getting a show.

Clarke makes a sound as though the thought of being seen turns her on even more, and her hips cant up. He laughs, a little bit in wonderment, and he dips his fingers beneath her waistband.

“You like that, don’t you babe?” he says, pulling her into the vee of his legs. Her back is to his chest and he shifts so she can feel his hardening cock against her ass. “You want people to see how hot I can make you?”

“Bellamy,” she whines when his mouth finds the top of her spine, warm on her skin. He rubs her through her panties, gentle easy circles that he knows must be maddening to her. Clarke likes it rough, to be manhandled by him. This was too nice, too delicate. Too much teasing.

She presses her hips back so that her ass grinds against his dick and he muffles a swear into her skin.

“So impatient,” he huffs, mouthing down the column of her neck now after he carefully pulls her hair to the other side. He’s torn between keeping it in a fist, pulling on it in that way that makes her moan, and using his free hand to pull at her tits.

Tits end up winning and she keens as he simultaneously plucks at a nipple while sliding his fingers deep inside her in one easy thrust.

“That better?” he asks, teeth grazing her skin while he strokes that spot inside her that makes her see stars.

“Much,” she gasps when he tugs the neckline of her tank top down, one her breasts coming free and he kneads it roughly. “Fuck Bellamy.”

He keeps kissing her neck as his fingers work and he can feel the way her cunt starts to get all sweet and tight around them. Her skin is flushed pink, pretty lips parted open slightly as she pants, and she looks even more gorgeous than usual like this, spread out against him with her head thrown back on his shoulder, practically glowing in the dwindling evening light. Clarke twists her head towards him, searching, and he gives her what she wants, a downright filthy, messy kiss that’s more spit and teeth than anything else, and she moans with it.

Bellamy pulls back, goes back to kissing her neck and he redoubles his efforts down below. “You gonna come for me now, princess?” he asks, licking the salt from her skin as he grinds his thumb against her clit. “You gonna come and show everyone just how loud you can be, babe?”

She whimpers and he feels the way she clenches down on his fingers.

She comes with an intense cry, loud enough that the people on the street must have heard, and he works her through it. It’s only after she’s sagged against him, breathing heavily, does he remove his fingers, intent on licking them clean as he usually does but Clarke beats him to the punch. She catches them in her own mouth, sucking lightly, and he feels her tongue graze the tips of them as she looks up at him all wide eyed and innocent.

It’s probably the hottest thing he’s ever seen in his life.

“Fuck princess,” he swears, staring at her, “Fuck babe, that’s so hot.”

He hauls her off of him, pressing her up against the balustrade and kissing her hard, much like the very first kiss they shared all those months ago.

They stumble inside, leaving their makeshift picnic on the balcony to clean up later, and he can’t stop touching her. His hands are on her breasts, her ass, her legs, practically everywhere as they try to get to the bedroom. They bump into almost every wall on their way there, trying to simultaneously strip out of their clothes. It’s fully dark out now, and the entire apartment is too, the only light coming from the hood above the stove.

Bellamy finds the knob to her door and he practically flings it open, throwing her on the bed, as he tears off her shorts. His belt is quick to follow as is his sweater.

She tangles her hand in his hair and kisses him deeper.

In their haste to undress he didn’t notice them; even if he did, he probably didn’t pay it any attention.The lights are off and he knows that Clarke has tattoos. She has a lot of tattoos. And while he would  _ love _ to sit there and catalogue each and every one, he hasn’t which means some of them are still new to him.

It’s only when he’s mouthing around her breasts, drinking in every moan and hitch of her breath, does he notice it.

He has his hands on her ribcage, occasionally flicking at a nipple but for the most part just there, holding her in place as he teases her with his mouth. Bellamy doesn’t realise it but he’s been absentmindedly stroking the skin there and Clarke freezes beneath him.

“What?” he asks, looking up at her.

She swallows. “Nothing. It’s just-- that’s my, um.”

She can’t get the words out but she doesn’t need to. That’s her mark, the one that would one day match up perfectly with someone else's. To be stroking it during this, during sex with another person, feels wrong, almost like cheating.

Regret fills his mouth like ash and Bellamy glances down, only for a second, before tearing his eyes away.

He does not want to see.

He doesn’t want to see the mark on her body that denotes her as someone else’s, and then feels the rush of crushing guilt as he realises that he wasn’t even thinking about his soulmate at all.

It’s too dark to see, but Bellamy has memorised his mark so many times that he thinks he could spot its twin from a mile away. He knows the colours, the lines, the feel of every curve of it. He’s studied it, like how a wartime general might study his enemy. In a way the mark and an enemy army are both the same thing, both wreaking havoc and bringing pain into people’s lives.

It’s dark and he knows that the possibility is slim to none but he hopes, he fucking  _ hopes  _ that for the first time in his life that this mark brings something other than pain to the table. 

When he looks down, again for just a second, his heart sinks because Bellamy knows his mark and he knows the lines on Clarke’s ribcage are different from his.

Still, he closes his eyes and mouths down the side of her ribcage, pretending that she has his garden there too, that this could be something holy and divine and not just a lust fuelled haze. It almost works when all he can hear is Clarke, her gasps and moans, when all he can feel is Clarke, the smooth softness of her skin, when all he taste and smell is Clarke, the saltiness of sweat and the sweetness of honeysuckle that clings to her skin.

He lets himself pretend that she is pretending too, especially when she looks up at him like that, all soft and wanting, when she brushes the hair away from his face and brings his lips towards hers for a kiss that seems too sweet for the moment.

Sex with Clarke feels different this time. Maybe it’s because there’s no rush for once, because they’re both naked and intertwined, his hips resting in the cradle of hers, their bodies grinding against each other. He’s learnt her body over time just as she’s learnt his, and they both put it to the test, making each other feel good.

He whispers something into her mouth-- a confession, a declaration of love, he doesn’t know. It gets lost on the way, turning into something else. A moan. Broken and ragged.

Clarke comes with his name on her tongue, the sweetest sound imaginable, and he follows just a few moments later, letting her climax bring him towards his own. He slumps against her body and she giggles, fingers toying with his hair at the nape of his neck. It feels nice.

“Stay,” she mutters sleepily a bit later, after he’s rolled off of her and they’ve both caught their breaths. The sweat is cooling on their skins and he shivers when she lightly blows against it. “I’ll make you pancakes in the morning. Chocolate chip, just like the diner. Stay.”

She curls into his side, fitting as though she’s always belonged there and oh how his heart  _ aches _ .

“Go to sleep, princess,” he says instead, brushing his lips across her forehead.

She tightens her hold on him, eyes already closed. “Promise me you’ll stay.”

“I promise,” he says, and it kills him to lie to her like this but fuck, he has to. He has to end things because he knows it’s not going to just break his heart, it’s going to crush it beyond repair.

When Clarke drifts off, Bellamy allows himself to lay there with her, basking in it for about a half hour or so before he eases himself out of bed and gets dressed. He tries not to look back, but his resolve when it comes to her was never the strongest, and he ends up doing it anyway, cataloguing the way she slept with her mouth half open, blonde tresses curled across the pillowcase, blanket pulled up to her chin with her toes peeking out through at the other end.

He leaves, feeling like a vice has wrapped around his heart, the weight of his soulmark pressing down against his ribs and making it hard to breathe, and he goes back to his apartment, alone, where he belongs.

Honestly Bellamy doesn’t know why he expected to get the day to be alone to mope.

He’s alone when he has breakfast, alone when he gets ready for a day of sitting on the couch and consuming nothing but Netflix and takeout. But then around midday Clarke barges into his apartment acting like she owns the place and pierces him with a glare.

It’s a bit terrifying if he’s being honest.

He expects her to rage at him, to yell at him for breaking his promises and coming back here after she fell asleep, but when she talks, her voice is quiet and that’s honestly even worse than if she had yelled.

“You left,” she says, still looking at him.

“Clarke--”

“I asked you to stay with me and you promised,” her voice cracks on the word, cracking his own heart in the process, “And then you left. You left me.”

“I know,” he says, ducking his head as shame burns through him. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?”

“Yes, I am. I’m sorry for leaving.”

He doesn’t look back up at her even though he can feel the weight of her stare on him. “That’s all you have to say?”

He nods.

“And what if that’s not enough?” she challenges, and he glances up at her to see the hard look on her face. It can’t hide the hurt in her eyes though, and he has to look away again, hating himself for being the reason that’s there.

“Then I’m sorry for that too.”

“Bellamy--”

“I have a soulmate,” he bursts, anguish leaking from his voice.

Clarke blinks, confused. “I know. You told me this already.”

“No, Clarke, you don’t understand,” he says as he shakes his head. “I have a soulmate. I have a fucking mark on my body that says somewhere, out there in this world, there’s someone who’s supposed to be perfect for me. That there’s this  _ person _ who’s supposed to be my equal in every way.”

“I know what soulmates are, Bellamy, you don’t have to explain it to me,” she says, but her voice wavers a little bit.

He can’t help but smile sadly at her, because despite all of this, she doesn’t quite get it, doesn’t quite understand what’s happening, and he can’t be upset with her. His hands tremble when he cards his fingers through his hair, an agitated swipe to move the curls from his face.

“I have a soulmate,” he starts softly, not quite looking at her but still keeping her within his periphery. “I have a soulmate and yet I can’t-- I still-- Clarke, I want to be with you.”

He stops, and watches her. Really watches her. Sees that despite how much she tries to keep her face blank there’s still the small flicker of shock that resonates. It gives him enough courage to continue.

“I want to be with you. Really be with you. I want to go on proper dates with you and hold your hand and kiss you whenever I want to. I know that we both probably have people out there in the world looking for us and that’s fine, and I know what I’m saying sounds so, so selfish but I--” he stops himself before the words could fall out, the  _ I love you _ filling his mouth like cotton, about to suffocate him if they don’t find their way out.

The mark on his chest is burning too, a bright, furious pain that makes him want to claw his skin off.

Bellamy takes a deep breath, takes a half step closer to her and lifts his hand.

“I’d choose you,” he says, impossibly soft, hesitating to cup her cheek. “Time and time again, I’d choose you.”

Clarke has gone silent and still under his touch, mouth parted and eyes wide as she looks up at him. Her hands are curled into tiny fists at her side, nails biting into the soft skin of her palms to stop herself from shaking. He still notices though, the slight tremble of her body and he aches to do something to comfort her, to take her hands and tangle their fingers together, to pull her body into his and envelop her in a hug.

Instead he drops his hand and steps back, leaving a gap of space between them.

“If you don’t want this,” he says, quiet, “Just say, Clarke. And I promise I’ll leave you alone.”

“No!” she blurts, and the sudden noise of it makes them both startle.

Clearing her throat, Clarke reaches for his hands, just letting her own rest on top of his. “No,” she says again, a lot softer. Her fingers trail across the tendons on the back of his hand, the scars and bruises that have always been there. “No, I-- I want this.”

He sucks in a surprised breath, not quite believing his ears. “You want to do this,” he says slowly, giving her enough time to correct him. “You want to try and date me.”

“I-- yes, I think so,” she stutters, and he lifts a brow.

“You  _ think _ so?” he asks, trying to fight a smile of relief as he rocks forward on his toes, still leaning over her. “It’s a yes or no answer, princess.”

“I won’t be much different from what we’re doing now anyway,” she says, also trying to fight her own smile. “Might as well give it a shot, right?”

“Oh, well if we  _ might as well _ ,” he teases, and she huffs, rolling her eyes at him before tugging his closer.

For all the kisses that they’ve shared this one is the most tentative.

Clarke is careful as she kisses him, mouth closed and dry, and it’s a slow brush of lips. He lets her take charge, content with following her lead, content with doing pretty much anything that she wants in this moment, if he’s being honest.

Clarke Griffin wants to date him.

It makes his heart flip and he ends up grinning into the kiss, stupidly so.

She pulls back, breathing heavy even though they didn’t do much, and draws her bottom lip between her teeth. Gently, he takes his thumb and pries it free and she looks up at him, eyes dark.

“I want this,” she says, quietly but firmly. “I want  _ you _ .”

It’s a small declaration but it still makes his heart feel too big to fit in his chest and he grins at her, bright and carefree and it actually shocks a laugh out of her. Bellamy draws her close, causing her to go up on tip toes as their chests press together and he ducks down to kiss her. It’s a hard kiss, searing, and it sends stars flashing behind his eyes as she loops her arms around his neck and kisses him back with all she’s got.

They take things slow.

He thought it would be hard to go from quiet hook ups in the bathroom to virtually nothing at all, but there’s something special about getting to hold Clarke’s hand and kiss her whenever he wants to that makes him giddy. He feels like a schoolboy with his first crush except he’s actually got the girl and they both walk hand in hand to the diner on Sundays for brunch.

Clarke is there when he comes home from work and she stays the night sometimes, curled around him and snoring peacefully. It’s nice to wake up to her, to be able to kiss her first thing in the morning, stale breath and all. It’s  _ nice _ to have someone.

(They make it a point to not talk about soulmates though, and he’s yet to show her-- really show her-- his mark, and her to him.)

She starts coming to the bar too, not every night but she comes on Fridays sometimes, dragging Raven or one of her other friends out with her.

It’s nice he thinks, to be able to spend time with her like that. A casual hand on the small of her back as they go grocery shopping together, her fingers scritching at the nape of his neck when they meet friends for drinks, her head in his lap as they look at television, his own fingers tangled in her hair. 

He likes her hair. Likes to see the gold strands drip between his fingers, likes how soft it feels, likes the way it makes her moan when they’re kissing and grabs on it and pulls just so.

They may be taking things slow, mostly just kissing and cuddling, but if his hands find themselves stroking her through her leggings, well, no one can blame them for having some  _ fun _ .

Bellamy has to work on Valentines Day and he apologises nonstop, which Clarke thinks is funny. She keeps laughing and peppering kisses all over his face and only stops when he meanly gropes at her breasts.

He’s a couple minutes late to his shift at the bar because he ends up pinning her to the door and making her come on his fingers. She follows him to the bar, evidence of her pleasure still staining her cheeks pink. It’s a bit of a distraction if he’s being honest, especially since she keeps biting her lips and leaning over the edge of the bar to get his attention. February is still bitterly cold but that doesn’t stop her from wearing a sweater that has a deep vee of a neckline. Her tits look absolutely delectable in it and if he looks closely he can just make out the faint bruise that he left on top of her right breast.

Clarke catches him staring and quirks an eyebrow, a coy grin playing at the corners of her mouth.

“See something you like?” she asks, propping her chin up in her hand as she watches him.

He smirks down at her, pointedly looking at the curve of her breasts. “Oh I see plenty.”

They continue to flirt pretty blatantly as the night goes on. Clarke orders the most suggestive drinks from him and makes sure he sees her sucking on the cherries and tying the stem in a knot. He just keeps up with the little casual touches that he knows drives her wild, a whisper of a touch on her collarbone, the graze of his breath on her ear.

By the time his shift is over, they’re both hot and wanting, and Bellamy clocks out without even offering to stay back and help Gabriel clean up. 

Their hands tangle together as they stumble out of the bar, giggling like a pair of teenagers, and Bellamy tugs her into the alley before they could get too far, pushing her up against the wall and kissing her hard.

Her hands immediately find his hair and he groans in her mouth when she tugs on his curls, slotting a knee between her legs. She grinds down unabashedly on it, moaning loudly, and he kisses across her jaw and down the column of her neck, sucking on her pulse point.

“Look at you,” he praises her, fingers digging meanly into her hips as she takes what she needs from him. “Always so greedy for more, aren’t you princess?”

She just moans in response and bites down on his mouth.

A part of him wants to fuck her right there. There’s a condom in his wallet and Clarke clearly has no qualms about anyone catching them. It’s been too long since he’s had her on his cock, since before they decided to give this a go. He wants to feel her fall apart around him.

Instead he pulls back, and she actually gapes at him. He laughs.

“Come on,” he says, taking her hand, dropping a kiss to her fingertips. He’s hard in his jeans, pressing uncomfortably against the zipper, but he ignores it. Clarke is thoroughly unsatisfied though and he can feel it rolling off of her in waves.

He smacks a kiss to her cheek. “It’s still Valentines Day for,” he glances at his watch, “Twenty seven more minutes. I’m taking you out.”

“What.”

He steals her car keys from her purse and clicks the doors open for them. “A date princess.”

“Who says I want to go on a date. I don’t like dates.”

“You’ll like this one,” he promises, sliding the gear in drive and pulling off smoothly. He casts a quick look to where she’s sulking in the passenger seat and bites back a grin. “When we get home I’ll do whatever you want.”

“I’m holding you to that,” she grumbles, crossing her arms and decidedly looking out the window.

She’s a bit less grumpy when they pull up in front of the diner, and he bites back a laugh at how she visibly brightens at the prospect of greasy food right now. It’s not all that busy in there but he still nabs a booth towards the back for them, and they order burgers and a side of fries and a large milkshake for them to split.

Their waitress returns with two glasses of water for them and he waits until she leaves again before he sets his hand casually on Clarke’s thigh.

She stills, straw wrapper half off in her hands, and he lets his fingers wander to the junction of her thighs, tracing the seam of her jeans.

“Bellamy,” she says, her voice remarkably even.

“Princess.” His fingers still right where her clit is and she sucks in a breath. “Something on your mind?”

“No, not at all,” she grits out when he starts applying a bit more pressure. Her legs open wider and he can feel the way she’s stopping herself from bucking up into his hands.

It would be easier to make her come with his fingers directly on her clit itself. He knows her body so well at this point that he’s fairly sure he could make her come in five minutes or less.

But they’re in the diner and he actually likes this place enough to not want to get kicked out for inappropriate conduct, so he just teases her over clothes instead. Clarke is trying her best to stay quiet but he can hear the occasional hitch in her breath, the bitten off end of a moan when he grinds his thumb hard on her clit.

He sees their waitress coming with their food in the reflection of the napkin dispenser and he casually pulls back his hand. Clarke ducks forward, letting her hair cover her flushed cheeks as she takes a long pull of her water. Her hands are shaking a little.

They both mutter their thanks and when she’s gone, Clarke slouches back down for him to continue touching her.

He doesn’t.

Bellamy takes a large bite of his burger to avoid laughing at the look of indignation on her face.

“You should eat that before it gets cold,” he tells her after he’s swallowed, and she smacks his arm with a closed fist.

“You’re terrible.”

He obnoxiously slurps at their milkshake. “The quicker we finish here, the quicker we can get home,” he murmurs to her, voice deliciously low in her ear, and she shivers. “And then you can get what you want.

He squeezes her leg, a promise, and Clarke throws him one last mean look before biting into her food.

They leave in under thirty minutes and Clarke drives them back, stretching the speed limit a bit even though his apartment is just a few minutes away.

As soon as she parks-- haphazardly, bent, but somehow still in her lines-- she’s on him, kissing him wet and dirty as her fingers flirt with the buckle on his belt.

“Upstairs,” he mumbles against her lips, all but hauling her out the car.

They stumble up the flights of stairs and now it’s her turn to tease him while he fumbles with his keys to get the door open. She rubs her body against his, sucking on his earlobe, and he misses the slot to open the deadlock twice.

Once inside, Bellamy is on her, pressing her to the door and squeezing at her tits. She moans into his mouth and he slips his tongue in, each kiss dirtier than the last, and he loves it. He loves her.

Clarke makes another one of those breathy sounds, hips searching for something to ease the pressure building between her legs. His hands, which were squeezing her ass, slides down to the back of her thighs and he lifts her, easy, causing her to squeak into his mouth. Bellamy laughs.

He sets her onto the kitchen counter and sinks to his knees in front of her. Clarke whines in displeasure.

“Come back up here,” she tells him, “I wanna fuck you.” She winds her fingers in his hair and tugs, hard, like the little brat she is at times. He delivers a stinging slap to the inside of her thigh and she squeaks, but it eventually tapers off into a moan when he roughly kneads her ass.

“Later,” he promises, his voice nothing more than a deep rumble, already making quick work of her belt and the snap of her jeans. “I just had dinner. Now I’m craving something sweet.”

She snorts. “You got jokes, huh?” she says, pushing back his fringe to look at him. He sinks blunt teeth into the muscle of her leg.

“Just speaking the truth, babe,” he says as he strips her of her jeans and underwear. She’s already fucking dripping, her cunt flushed a pretty candy pink from all the teasing back at the diner. He squeezes her hips, pulling her closer to the edge. “Look at you, fucking gorgeous.”

One of her legs strikes out as though to kick him, but he catches it and throws it over his shoulder. “You’re insufferable, you know that,” she says, her breath hitching as he rubs his thumb in the crease of her thigh.

“Very much so,” he agrees before licking a fat stripe up her centre.

There’s just something about eating pussy--  _ Clarke’s  _ pussy-- that he finds to be akin to a religious experience. He’s always liked it, going down on girls until his jaw was cramped and they were breathless, but with Clarke it’s different. She just makes these  _ sounds _ , a mix between a sob and a gasp, and she’s just so vocal and responsive to everything he does. Bossy too, but fuck if that doesn’t do it for him, making him wish he had something to rut against while he licked into her.

“Bellamy,” she gasps out, her hand in his hair, holding him to her. It’s almost painful but it only adds to his pleasure.

“You want something, princess?” he asks, pulling back to sit on his haunches. He can feel her slickness coating his mouth and chin, and judging from the way Clarke stares at him, eyes half lidded with a dazed, dark look in them, he makes for a pretty picture.

He lets his thumb graze against her clit when she cants her hips up, whining.

“Come on, why’d you stop?” she asks as he continues to trace soft, barely there circles into her heated flesh.

“I thought you wanted me to fuck you,” he says, feigning confusion. One of his fingers ghosts across her entrance and he watches as she clenches down on nothing.

Clarke groans. “Don’t be a fucking dick,” she snaps, or at least tries to. Her voice is too thready, too laced with want to sound properly annoyed.

He chuckles, rubbing his cheek against her oversensitive skin. There’s just the barest bit of stubble present, enough to bite.

“You wanna come, princess?” he asks, still teasing her with his fingers even though his mouth is annoyingly close to where she wants him. “You wanna come on my tongue?”

“ _ Bellamy _ .”

He slaps her thigh again, but there’s no real heat behind it, barely packing a sting, but it’s still enough that she yelps and her heels press into his back.

“Use your words, babe,” he tells her before shallowly thrusting a finger inside of her. He barely lets it go past the first knuckle before he pulls it back out and she keens with it. “Ask and you’ll receive, princess.”

“I’m gonna fucking murder you,” she pants, hips straining against his hold as she tries to buck in his face.

“Ooh, wrong choice of words.” He circles her clit lazily with his tongue before sucking on it gently enough that she whines. “I’ll give you one more chance.”

“Bellamy, please,” she begs, sounding close to tears. Her cheeks are pink and her hair is sticking to her temple with sweat, looking like rivers of molten gold.

He smirks up at her, “Atta girl, Clarke,” and then finally,  _ finally _ , gives her what she wants.

All of his teasing has culminated into what is a truly impressive orgasm for her, one that leaves her shaking and breathless for several moments after.

Bellamy is willing to give her as much time as she needs to come back down, but Clarke has other ideas. She reaches down for him and hauls him up by his ears, licking the taste of herself out of his mouth as she struggles to get his pants off.

He helps her of course, hissing when she gets her hands on him and starts stroking, quick and thorough, while he roots around for a condom.

The kitchen counter isn’t quite large enough for this, but they make it work, one of her legs hooked around his waist and the other thrown over his shoulder. They both groan when he slides in and Bellamy sets an unforgiving pace. 

It’s their first time having sex-- actual, proper sex-- since they agreed to give things a go for real, and it certainly does not disappoint. It’s hot and filthy, nothing like the soft, sweet first time he had pictured in his head. Bellamy murmurs all sorts of things as he fucks her, showering praise on her that makes her cunt clench around him and Clarke’s nails dig into his back even through the fabric of his sweater. 

They’re both going to leave bruises on each other, and he gets a sick thrill at the thought. Fuck a soulmark, these are the only marks that matter to him, the ones Clarke leaves on his body as she takes what she wants. The ones that show he belongs to  _ her _ .

He slips a hand between them when he feels his orgasm start to build deep in his belly, rubbing at her clit, adamant that she comes again before he does.

It’s a close call but he gets her there, just as the dam of pleasure finally bursts within him.

He blacks out for a second, somehow ending up with his head pillowed on her breasts which. He’s certainly not complaining about  _ that _ . Clarke cards her fingers through his sweaty fringe and she smiles at him when he looks up at her.

They’re both drenched in sweat, clothes half on, and his back is starting to hurt from being bent over at this angle for so long. Clarke giggles when he mentions it and he swats at her.

“Old man,” she says, fond.

“Shut up,” he grins at her and swipes one last kiss before they straighten up.

She calls dibs on the shower first, leaving Bellamy to clean up the mess they made in the kitchen before he takes his turn, washing off all the sweat and the lingering smell of alcohol from his skin.

He climbs into bed beside her, dropping a kiss on her forehead and Clarkes hums happily.

“Maybe you were right,” she sighs, snuggling into his side.

“I usually am,” he says, cocky, and she pinches the soft skin under his bicep. “Ouch. Okay, what am I right about this time?”

“That I liked that date,” she murmurs, already half asleep, and he smiles down at her, soft. “It was a good date.”

“We’ll go on as many as you want.”

“Good.”

* * *

Bellamy’s worked in bars since he was eighteen. First he worked as a dishwasher and busboy, fetching things from storage, making sure there was enough ice, cleaning up tables. Then, once he was legal to be around alcohol, he started working as a bartender. He was self taught, consulting Youtube and a couple mixology books to get started. A bartender paid better than a busboy, plus he got tips, especially when he learnt how to harness his charisma properly.

The first bar he worked at was pretty sketchy. They didn’t care to card much and turned a blind eye to the people snorting coke off the bathroom sinks. Most of the patrons were wild, quick to anger, and Bellamy found himself parting more than his fair share of bar fights. It wasn’t a Friday night without someone threatening to stab someone else with a broken bottle.

The new bar he works at is a lot better in terms of clientele and behaviour. He’s maybe only had to break up about four or five fights since starting there a year and a half ago, and it was almost always drunk frat boys who somehow managed to slip a fake ID past one of them. Plus the most illicit substance they’ve had to deal with was weed, which he’d take any day over fucking  _ cocaine _ .

It’s March now, the weather finally warming up a bit, but not too much. He still has to wear a jacket when walking at night.

It’s spring break too, and college students are out in full force. Every night there’s a group-- or several groups-- of sorority girls and frat boys and strays in between, buying the cheapest most disgusting shots and yelling the cringiest chants. He’s fairly certain that spring break was just another way to make alcohol poisoning sound cool.

Like the past few nights, the bar is packed when he shows up for his shift that night, and he’s profoundly glad that Clarke elected to stay home and work on a project for one of her clients. It’s due next week, and she always gets hyper focused when there’s a deadline looming, Bellamy having to step in and remind her to eat and sleep.

Gabriel greets him with a nod when he slips behind the counter and Bellamy returns it.

“College students,” the other man mutters darkly as he preps another round of tequila shots.

Bellamy commiserates with him. College students are the worst. They’re raucous and wild and tip terribly.

He slaps him on the back. “Cheer up, maybe tonight won’t be so bad,” he tells him as he sets about mixing a rum and coke.

Gabriel flashes him an irked glance. “I’ve had four requests to give a lap dance already.”

“Hey, maybe if you do those sorority girls will empty their daddy’s money in the tip jar.”

He barks out a laugh. “Maybe you should try it then, Blake. You’re way more of a pretty boy than me.”

“I’ll let you know if I need you to queue up  _ Ginuwine _ for me,” he says dryly before leaning across the bar, charming smile already in place, to take the next order.

As the next couple of hours pass, he finds that smile faltering, getting more and more brittle with each obnoxious frat boy he has to serve. He has to force himself to think about going home and getting to call Clarke to rant about all of his customers from tonight to prevent himself from actually throttling anyone.

Of course, as the night wore on and they got even more drunk, not even that can curb his annoyance.

He’s just delivered another round of shots to a table of college girls who were looking at him a bit too closely for him to be comfortable when there’s a loud crash followed by the sound of people yelling.

“Oh great, just what I need tonight,” grumbles Gabriel, glaring at a pair of frat boys at the back of the bar who’ve started fighting. There’s a crowd gathering around them, jeering them on, and he rolls his eyes.

“You go get the broom, I’ll break them up,” says Bellamy, grabbing a spray bottle from under the bar. He’s learnt that sometimes the best way to deal with overly drunk patrons is to spray them with water as though they’re an undisciplined cat.

He makes his way over there now, shouldering through the crowd roughly to get to the pair of idiots in the centre.

“Hey!” he shouts, “Knock it off!”

He spritzes some of the water at them but it has little effect. They’re still grunting and throwing punches at one another, yelling about some girl.

Great. He pinches the bridge of his nose. The fight was about who’s screwing who.

He really hates college students.

Taking care to sidestep the broken glass on the floor, Bellamy enters the fray himself, grabbing the shoulder of the nearest dudebro and roughly hauling him around. He expects the fist flying towards his face and he ducks, instinctively.

What he doesn’t expect is the  _ second _ fist flying towards his face from the other guy.

The punch is sloppy, off centre and catches him on his brow bone, but it still packs a lot of power behind it, enough to slam his head against the nearby wall.

Bellamy sees stars behind his eyelids and hears the resounding  _ crack! _ of his skull hitting the exposed brick, everything going dark for a second. There’s a trickle of something warm down the side of his face, and judging from the way his brow is lancing, that asshole must have split the skin there.

He grunts, straightening up and shaking off the dizziness before lunging at the nearest one. He clips him in the jaw, not hard enough to break it, but definitely hard enough to send him into a momentary stupor.

The other guy, the one who actually landed the hit on him is still a problem though, still panting with rage, and it takes both him and Gabriel to restrain him though not before he lands a couple good hits on his ribs. If it was anything like the blow Bellamy got to his head, they’re bound to leave a mark.

“Fucking college kids,” Gabriel wheezes after they finally got them to clear out. He frowns, looking at the bloody wad of napkins that Bellamy is holding to his head. “Shit, you want me to call an ambulance? The police or something?”

He waves him off. “Nah it’s fine. Not worth it.” His head is pounding, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. Even the blood is fine. Bellamy’s always heard that head wounds bleed a lot.

“You sure man?” he asks, sweeping up the glass.

“Yeah.”

“Well, you can take the rest of the night off. Maybe call your girlfriend to give you a lift home.”

“I might head home,” Bellamy agrees grudgingly. “But I don’t want to bother her. I don’t live that far from here.”

Gabriel clearly doesn’t agree with that but he doesn’t push him. “Okay. If you’re sure.” He claps him on the back before leaving.

Bellamy slips out through the back entrance of the bar and texts Clarke to make sure she ate the dinner he dropped off for her earlier in the day. She responds immediately that yes she did, and then sends a follow up text asking how come he’s messaging her if his shift’s not over for another hour and a half.

He hesitates only for a moment before telling her that there was a bar fight, but it’s fine now. When she doesn’t say anything for another two minutes he clicks his screen off and tucks his phone back into his pocket, continuing his walk home.

In hindsight he probably shouldn’t have mentioned anything about a bar fight to her because Clarke is able to put two and two together rather quickly. He blames his lack of foresight on the throbbing in his head.

She shows up at his apartment when he’s rooting around the freezer for something that could be used as an ice pack for his bruised fist and he sighs when he hears the sound of her key turning in the lock.

“You really didn’t have to come,” he tells her, deliberately turning his body away from her. The cut on his temple has stopped bleeding but he hasn’t gotten around to cleaning it as yet and he knows the sight of his blood is going to freak her out even more.

“You texted me saying that you got into a bar fight,” she says flatly, “Of course I’m going to come.”

“I didn’t get into a fight. I was trying to stop the fight.”

“And you got body slammed into a wall in the midst of it.”

It’s almost annoying how she manages to hit the nail on the head.

Clarke sighs. “Turn around Bellamy, let me see.”

“I’m fine Clarke, really. It’s just a couple of bruises.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

He snorts. “You were  _ pre med _ . You never even made it to an actual hospital. How exactly are you going to help me.”

“I can list all the anatomical structures and their relations for you.”

He wants to laugh, but the ache in his ribs stops him from doing so. “Please don’t make me laugh,” he says, holding his side.

“ _ Bellamy _ .”

He sighs. Clarke’s stubborn, and he knows that she won’t give up until she gets what she wants.

“Fine. But I just want you to know that it really does look worse than it feels,” he says, lying a little for her benefit. His head is pounding like a motherfucker.

Clarke, for her part, doesn’t react when she sees him. In fact, she keeps annoyingly blank, surveying his injuries, from the cut on his brow, to his bruised knuckles, to the way he holds his ribs.

“It really is nothing,” he finds himself saying, and the look she gives him could cut glass.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Clarke--”

“Nope. Bathroom. Now.”

“I’ve had worse than this.”

“I really don’t need to know that right now,” she tells him, grabbing his arm and tugging him to the bathroom with her.

She puts the lid down on the toilet and shoves him to sit there before rooting around his cabinets for supplies since Bellamy doesn’t actually have a first aid kit. She finds some peroxide, cotton wool and an old pack of bandages.

“Do you have any blurry vision?” she asks as she cleans the shallow scrapes on his knuckles. “Nausea, confusion, headache?”

“I hit my head against a wall. Of course I have a headache,” he deadpans, and then winces when she’s unnecessarily rough with the next pass of the cotton pad.

“I’m trying to make sure you don’t have a concussion, you dick,” she says, glaring at him, but he can see the way she’s biting her lip to stop from smiling.

“What are you going to do if I do have one?” he asks, cocking his head to the side as he looks at her. “You’re not a doctor.”

“I’ll tell you everything I remember about the rhombencephalon and hope it helps.”

“See,  _ now  _ I’m confused.”

She pinches the thin skin that covers his wrist and he laughs. “Ow, that hurt, princess. Poor bedside manner. I see why you didn’t go to med school.”

She exhales roughly, the puff of air disturbing the tendrils of hair that hang around her face. “Why am I even helping you?”

“Because you like me,” he says, a bit cheeky, and she bites back another smile.

“God knows why.” She grabs another piece of cotton and douses it with peroxide before leaning in to clean the cut on his brow. “You’re a dick.”

He stays quiet as Clarke works, eyes half shut, content with just looking at her through his lashes. He studies the curve of her neck, the planes of her face, the way her jaw comes to a point at her chin. There’s a smudge of something dark beneath it and his rubs at it with his thumb.

“Charcoal,” she explains, blushing a little, “I was sketching out some ideas for my project before I came here.”

“I’m sorry I disturbed you,” he rumbles out, staying very still as she picks one of the smallest bandages from the box and sticks it on. She drops a kiss on top of it afterwards.

“Nah, you’re fine. I got all my work done for today already.”

She grabs all the used bits of cotton as well as the wrapper for the band aid and tosses them in the dustbin next to the sink.

Turning back to him now, Clarke places her hands on her hips and says, “Okay, shirt off.”

Bellamy stares at her.

“What.”

“You heard me.” She plucks at the collar of his t-shirt that has a few drops of dried blood staining it there. “I saw you holding your ribs. I just want to make sure they’re not broken.”

“You got x-ray super powers you’re not telling me about, princess?” he says, trying to play it cool even though his heart rate has significantly picked up.

Clarke does not look impressed.

“Come on Bellamy, quit being a baby.”

“I just really don’t think that it’s necessary--”

“Take it off or else I’ll rip it off.”

He tries for a smirk. “Now, I know you’re a bit insatiable sometimes babe, but really, I’m injured and--”

“ _ Bellamy _ .”

“Okay, fine.”

He’s run out of excuses and Clarke really does look as though she’s two seconds from grabbing his kitchen shears and cutting the damn thing off him.

His hands shake as he reaches for the hem and he has to take a deep breath before he pulls it off.

Through the mirror Bellamy can see what she sees, a couple bruises from the fight, already turning blue, and his soulmark, too bright, too noticeable, right there on his ribs for anyone to see.

She sucks in a breath, her hand reaching out on its own to touch it, and Bellamy looks away.

Her breath catches as she trails her fingers over that spot on his chest, over his soulmark, and Bellamy closes his eyes, unable to look at her. He knows what he feels when he catches sight of the mark in the mirror-- disgust, hurt, betrayal. He doesn’t think that he could survive seeing those same emotions reflected back on Clarke’s face.

For a moment, she doesn’t say anything, and he keeps his eyes squeezed closed.

And then, after a long, sticky silence--

“Is this yours?” she asks, her voice pitched low and hands trembling against his skin.

He clenches his jaw and nods.

“How long?” Her voice is hoarse.

“What?”

Bellamy opens his eyes and looks at her, finding Clarke pale faced and looking… scared? He’s not sure, he’s never really seen that expression on her face before. It makes him sit up, ignoring the painful protest that his ribs give, and he tries to get a closer look at her.

Clarke drops her hand as if burned.

“How long have you known?” she asks again, inching away from him, her voice coming a bit stronger.

“Known what? You’re not making any sense, princess,” he says, eyebrows furrowed as he looks at her.

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps at him.

Bellamy freezes.

“Clarke,” he tries, slowly, “What’s going on?”

Her entire body is shaking, he realises, and she’s backed up against the vanity, no more space to run in his tiny bathroom. She looks like a cornered animal, ready to claw her way out of this if needed.

“Your mark, Bellamy,” she says, louder and a little frenzied, “How long have you known?”

“I’ve had it since I was fifteen,” he says slowly, still terribly confused. “What--”

“Don’t play dumb with me,” she hisses, “How long have you known and been keeping this from me?”

“Clarke, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says again, trying to placate her.

He tries to reach out for her but she pulls away and then laughs, cold and brittle, and it makes him wince.

“Oh, you have no idea what I’m talking about,” she mocks him in that mean voice of hers, looking nothing like the caring, soft Clarke from moments ago. Looking nothing like  _ his _ Clarke. “You’ve what, lied to me for months and now you’re pretending to be clueless, is that it?”

“No because I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, half exasperated and half worried because she has a crazed look in her eye. His head throbs and the rest of his body still hurts from the fight and he’s genuinely so tired and confused about what she’s talking about.

“Well since you don’t  _ know _ ,” she snarls at him and it makes him flinch, “Allow me to give you a refresher.”

She grabs hold of the hem of her sweater and tugs it up.

Bellamy automatically averts his gaze. He doesn’t want to see the evidence that she could never love him the most. He’d rather get his head shoved into a wall at the bar again.

“Look at me,  _ goddammit _ ,” she hisses, and he can feel her anger simmering just beneath the surface.

He looks up.

And then he freezes.

Clarke has tattoos on her ribs. He knows this because she mentioned once, offhandedly, that the ones on her ribs had hurt the most. He’s seen them himself that one time, but could have barely paid attention then, lust and alcohol and weed all mingling in his system. There’s a wave and a constellation and a snake that catches his attention almost immediately.

The snake is curling through a cluster of flowers. The same cluster of flowers that he could probably draw with his eyes closed by now, purely off of memory, had he any talent.

The tattoo covers the edges a bit, warping the shape and making it look bigger and wider than it actually is, but there’s no doubt about it in his mind that the mark right there on Clarke’s ribs is the twin to his.

Bellamy’s not sure how to react at the moment, feeling a flurry of different emotions at the same time.

If before he found out that Clarke,  _ his  _ Clarke, his princess, was his soulmate he’d be ecstatic. Now it just feels like a cruel twist of fate, the universe getting one last laugh at him before it reveals just who is behind the curtain.

“You’re real quiet now,” she says, letting her shirt drop back down to cover her ribs. He feels as though he can still see it, even through the fabric, a beacon shining out at him. “What, nothing to say not that you’ve been caught in your lies?”

Her face is twisted, anger and despair warring with each other on there, and he feels his heart clench.

“Clarke I swear, I didn’t know,” he says to her, pleading, and she just scoffs.

“Save it,” she snarls, storming out of the bathroom, “I don’t want to hear anything from you ever again.”

She leaves, slamming the door shut behind her and Bellamy flinches, that one sound echoing in the chasm she left behind.

The ache in his chest is worse than any injury to be inflicted in a bar fight. He exhales loudly and sags against the toilet, letting his head fall into his hands. He’s not sure how long he stays like that but it must have been a while, his muscles starting to seize and cramp from disuse.

When he stands up, his knees creak, and he thinks about how Clarke loves to tease him about it.

The ache worsens.

He doesn’t bother to clean up the bathroom. Instead he takes two ibuprofen and goes to bed, hoping that things are better in the morning.

They are not.

When he wakes up his entire body is sore, multicoloured bruises on his chest, and the cut above his eye stings when he gets it wet in the shower. He waits until after he has breakfast to break his phone, and his heart falls when he sees that he has no missed calls or messages from Clarke.

He manages to hold out until night time to try and reach her. He tries to call her a few times, to explain, but she lets them go to voicemail. He texts her too, but if she’s not answering his calls, he highly doubts that she’s reading his messages. He stops after the fourth call goes unanswered and decides to let her have her space instead.

Bellamy and Clarke don’t speak for a week.

It’s as though he’s in a haze for that entire week. He doesn’t know what he eats, can’t remember how he gets to work, if he’s doing his job right. Octavia texts him on the third day, asking if something happened between them because Clarke has been sulking.

_ i told u not to fuck my roommate. if clarke kicks me out bcus of this im gonna kill u _

He snorts when he sees the message and doesn’t bother to respond to it. Trust Octavia to make this about herself.

Every evening when he gets home from work he finds himself sitting in his makeshift office at home, the one she helped him put together, and thumbs through a sketchbook she left behind. It’s mostly drawings of him; Bellamys hunched over the desk as he scribbles something, Bellamys in the kitchen making them dinner, Bellamys smiling at her. There’s a lot of drawings where he’s just smiling at her, that silly lovestruck expression on his face even evident on paper.

Sometimes he thinks about going over to the apartment, forcing her to talk things out with him like an adult, but Clarke has a deadline this week and he doesn’t want to be responsible for another thing going wrong in her life.

So he waits.

He plants out what he’s going to say to her, filling sheets of paper with his thoughts, everything from a rational, well thought out explanation to a sappy love confession. He ends up binning them all.

Her project is due on Friday. Bellamy waits until Saturday morning to text her, asking if he could come over and talk.

An hour later she replies with a simple  _ okay _ .

He’s nervous as he takes the subway over to her apartment, palms sweaty, and he can’t stop shaking his leg. Before he knows it he’s standing in front of her door, and all the residual tension and emotion that he’s been burying for the past week is there, buzzing under his skin.

He takes a deep breath and knocks, ignoring the key that he has hooked on his keychain. She got him that keychain, a gladiator helmet hanging off of it.

Clarke opens the door after a few minutes and for a moment, they just stare at each other.

She looks as tired as he feels, dark circles under her eyes, and her hair is heaped on the top of her head into a messy bun. She’s wearing leggings even though she’s home, and a thick cardigan, as opposed to her usual shorts and a t-shirt combo. She keeps her face impassive as she surveys him, and he wonders if she sees the same thing: tired eyes, unkempt hair, a hidden yearning.

He’s missed her, as much as she left him hurting, he still missed her.

Bellamy clears his throat.

“Can I come in?” he asks, keeping his hands in his pockets to stop himself from reaching out to her.

“Sure.” Her voice is deceptively clear of any emotion.

Octavia isn’t home. She told him that she was going to study at the library today because Clarke was playing her sad girl jams too loud for her to focus. His sister made it sound that Clarke was just as wrecked as he was over their falling out but now, standing here in front of her, she seems remarkably put together. It’s a stark difference when compared to him, Bellamy, who feels like he’s about to break at any given moment.

She leads him to her bedroom and he swallows thickly as he walks in, another layer of tension descending on the room. The door snicks shut behind him.

“You wanted to talk,” she says, leaning against the wall furthest from him, just observing.

Bellamy’s back is to the door. It would be so easy for him to grab the handle and slip out, to ignore what is surely going to be an awkward, painful conversation, but if he leaves, that would make things worse between them. At least now he might have a chance to salvage things.

He doesn’t want to think about what might happen if they can’t.

He can’t lose Clarke. 

Not just because they’re soulmates, in fact, that’s what matters the least to him right now. Bellamy loves her. He cares about her. Even if all they can be after this is just friends, he’d be fine with that. He would rather have her in his life as a friend than not at all. He can’t lose her.

He clears his throat.

“Clarke…” he starts, moving to stand closer to her but pausing when she steps back. “I don’t know what happened. What I did to make you mad.”

“You don’t know.” Her voice is flat, and it makes him flinch.

“No, I really don’t. This whole thing was as much of a shock to me as it was for you.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“I’m being serious.”

“You  _ know _ ,” she says, words sharp, “You know how I feel about-- about this whole thing. The marks. The whole ideology behind them. You know I don’t like it.”

“I do,” he nods, “And I’ve never lied to you about how I feel about them.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s the truth,” he volleys back to her. “The whole prospect of soulmates--” She recoils at the word, “--I’ve never had a good experience with them. My mother died because of hers. I’ve seen people close to me get hurt because of them. I never liked it.”

Clarke’s mouth is twisted into a harsh line and she folds her arms atop her chest as she regards him. “So you say. But answer me this,” she holds him in place with a piercing stare, “When you found out that we were-- that we match, did you still feel that way? Did you still hate the idea of it so much?”

The question takes him by surprise. It’s almost laughable for her, for anyone really, to ever assume that he could hate Clarke. He could never hate anything that has something to do with her, doesn’t think that that’s possible. Without a doubt the answer springs to his mind.

“No,” he says softly, “No, I don’t.”

Her responding smile is triumphant, as though she’s won something against him, but it’s also empty, grim. “There you have it.”

“But this,” he presses his hand to his mark through his shirt, “This doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

The little composure she has left is turned to dust. “You lied to me about it!” she snaps at him. “You lied to me because you know how those things make me feel, and you lied, just so we could keep on pretending.”

“I didn’t lie!” He runs an agitated hand through his hair. “Clarke, I found out the same time as you did, when you showed me yours in the bathroom.”

They’re both glaring at each other now, emotions are running high on both their parts. Her bedroom is suddenly too small to house all of it and it will be only a matter of time until it explodes and someone says something that they can’t take back.

After a heated moment, Clarke sighs, slumping against the wall as she runs a hand down her face. Her entire being screams weariness as she looks back up at him, and just like that, he feels all the fight leak out of him.

“We’ve been naked before,” she points out, quiet. “That night, the day after I came home from seeing my mother. We had sex and then you ran away.”

Bellamy does remember that night in almost vivid detail. He remembers holding her, his fingertips tangled in her hair, the scent of honeysuckle surrounding him. He remembers his hand on her torso as he mouthed across her breasts, the way she froze at his touch and murmured, almost shyly, that that was her mark.

He remembers the pain of his heartbreak when a quick glance at it showed that it wasn’t a match to his.

But somehow it was, wasn’t it?

His tongue darts out to wet his lips.

“It was dark,” he says to her, soft, “It was dark, and we were both drunk and a bit high. And I-- I didn’t want to look at it. It hurt me too much.”

Clarke lifts a brow. “But you still saw. You could have said something.”

Bellamy shakes his head, a wry, humourless smile on his face. “I really didn’t. I saw the outline of it but, with your tattoo, it didn’t look the same. It didn’t look like  _ mine _ . It was-- I’ve loved you for a long time, Clarke. And if I had dwelled on that, on your mark after I already saw that the shapes didn’t match, it would have broken me.”

She’s quiet for a minute, and when he chances a glance at her she looks thoughtful.

He wants to go to her, be close to her, the distance between them in the bedroom seeming impossibly far, but he also does not want to disturb this fragile peace that they’ve made.

“You really didn’t know,” she says at last, squinting at him.

“No I didn’t. I know how you feel about-- about soulmates,” he says, stumbling over the word. It’s the first time either of them have verbally mentioned what this means and it’s like the air immediately thickens with tension around them. “I know how you feel and if I had known… if I had realised, I would have told you.”

“You would have told me?”

Her shrugs, a jerky up-down of his shoulders as he tries not to look at her. “I know how you feel about soulmates Clarke. I know you never really wanted to meet yours.”

She cocks her head to the side. “How do you know that?”

“You told me in my kitchen last year. We were talking about your ex.” One of his eyebrows quirk up. “I  _ do _ listen to you when you speak, you know that right.”

“Shut up,” she says, grinning a little, and it eases some of the tension in the room. “I know you listen, I just. I didn’t expect you to remember that.”

“Big thing to expect me to forget,” he says lightly.

She huffs. “You know what I mean.”

“Uh huh.”

“What would you have done?” she asks suddenly, cocking her head to the side. At his questioning look she clarifies, “If you realised that you were my-- that we matched. What would you have done?”

“Well,” he starts slowly, mulling over each of his words, “I would have let you know, obviously. And I’d let you make the decision. I know you don’t like the whole idea of soulmates and if you never wanted to see me again then I’d respect that.”

“You’d do that? All of that? Just because it’s what  _ I _ want?” she asks, a little bit incredulously as she squints at him.

He feels the warmth pool in his cheeks and drops his gaze, scuffing his toes against the floor. “Course I would, Clarke. I love you too much to do anything that would actively hurt you,” he says, gruff.

“That’s the second time you’ve said that.”

“Said what?”

“That you love me.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

It’s not something that he was keeping track of. In all honesty, hiding the fact that he loves her was the last thing on his mind right now.

He’s still not looking at her, eyes focused on the floor, tracing the grain of the hardwood, but he hears as she pads across to him, sees the chipped red nailpolish that covers her toes come into his line of sight.

Clarke touches his cheek, soft and a little tentative. Her fingers are cold.

“Bellamy,” she says, barely above a whisper, and he looks up.

“Yeah?” he swallows.

Her eyes are tracing across the contours of his face, mapping the constellations between his freckles and he feels very much  _ seen _ in that moment. The warm colour beneath his skin darkens and her thumb accidently grazes the corner of his mouth.

“What do you want?” she asks him, quiet and a little fond.

“What do  _ I _ want?”

“Yes,” she nods, “In all of this, you’ve just been talking about what I might want. Now I want to know what you want.”

Bellamy doesn’t think that anyone has ever asked him that in his entire life.

It’s stupid to think of that, especially now when Clarke is standing there, looking at him with this easy, open look on her face, but all he’s ever known putting the needs of others before his own. His mother never asked if he wanted a baby sister, she just came home one day and passed the squawking, squirming bundle to him. And he loves Octavia, of course he loves her, but he also had to take on the role of parent and grow up too fast to keep her out of trouble. Even after their mother died he was still putting her needs before his, skipping out on going to college so she’d have that opportunity.

Bellamy can’t remember the last time he did something big just for himself.

He leans into her touch, lets his hand cover hers, and he says, “You, Clarke. All I could ever want is you.”

Her responding smile is like a supernova exploding.

When Clarke rolls up on her toes to kiss him, he goes willingly, his hand already finding itself in her hair and staying there. It’s sloppy with too much teeth because they’re both smiling too fucking much, and it’s a bit wet because at some point someone started crying. Bellamy’s not quite sure if it’s him or her. Probably both.

They end up tumbling into her nearby bed, trading kisses as they slowly peel off each other’s clothes. Clarke helps him out of his t-shirt, hands skimming across the ridges of his abs, and he returns the favour by pulling her sweater off. She’s wearing another one of her bralettes, dark lace with a thick band that covers her mark in its entirety. Bellamy shoots her a questioning glance and she bites her lip, nodding. He tugs it off, leaving her bare from the waist up, but for once his eyes don’t drop to her exposed breasts.

His hands shake a little when they find her soulmark and he traces it, reverent. Right there, in the waning afternoon light, was a cluster of dahlias and frangipanis and cherry blossoms, pressed against her chest, the same colours and lines as his own but with a tattoo of snake curling through it.

The metaphor is pretty straightforward. How something so beautiful could be able to hide something deadly, something that could  _ hurt _ .

Above him, Clarke sucks in a breath, he glances up at her, fingertips skimming the curves of the tattoo.

“I didn’t know it was possible to tattoo over a soulmark,” he rumbles, stroking her skin. The snake is all thick dark lines slithering through the garden on her ribs, reminding him much of the ouroborus in his arm. Even through the black ink he can still make out the rich colours of the mark.

“I have a friend, Luna,” she says, her voice a bit throaty due to his touch, “She’s a tattoo artist. Her soulmate died when they were really young and her mark just reminded her of her pain. She developed a special kind of ink that could hide the marks more easily.” She flashes him a wry grin. “When I told her what I wanted to do she said my soulmate probably wouldn’t like it.”

He grins at her in kind before he leans down and presses a kiss to it, just a dry brush of his lips. Clarke’s hands clench in the sheets.

“It suits you,” he tells her, and she smiles up at him, bright and wanting.

She pulls him back up for a searing kiss, this one filled with  _ purpose _ , and then rolls them over so she’s on top, straddling him.

Bellamy finds that he can’t stop touching the mark, even as his thumbs graze the undersides of her breasts and she rocks down on him.

Clarke cups his face in both hands and gives him another soft kiss, too quick for his liking, but she lingers, tracing the line of his jaw.

“You’re all I could ever want too,” she says almost silently. “I didn’t say that before.”

He sits up, pressing a kiss to her neck, and then right below her ear. “You didn’t have to.”

“But I wanted to. For you.”

Bellamy presses their foreheads together, laughing a little. His heart feels ten times larger, far too big to be contained in his chest.

Clarke laughs too, a bright, dazzling sound, and then she pushes him back down so he lays flat on the bed. Her hands find the button of his jeans.

It takes a bit of maneuvering to get their pants off. They don’t want to stop touching each other but they have to in order to scramble out of the rest of their clothes. But once they’re both naked and he manages to slide a condom on, she takes charge again, climbing on top of him and sinking down in one easy motion.

From there it’s just a slow grind of hips, bodies moving together as one. Clarke can’t stop touching him either, his chest, his face, his mark. She’s a lot more cautious than he was, but it still sends a bolt of electricity shooting through his core when she does it, and he bucks up into her heat. She does it again, smirking at him, and he gropes her ass in retaliation, kneading the flesh there. He ends up swearing when she clenches around him as a result of that.

Her hair is loose and flows down her back in silky waves and he can’t stop touching it, letting his fingers get caught in the gold strands, tugging on it to make her moan. She looks as though she’s glowing and he finds himself murmuring  _ beautiful _ a lot.

After they both come, Clarke slumps across his chest, breathing heavily. They stay like that for a while, catching their breaths as the sweat cools on their skins, and eventually she rolls off of him. She doesn’t go too far though, tucking herself into his side like she’s done hundreds of times. Her hands start tracing absentminded patterns across his skin.

He catches her wandering hand with his, their fingers tangling together, and brings it up to his mouth to drop a quick kiss to her fingertips. She smiles, looking soft and ethereal in the fading glow of the evening sun.

“I meant it you know,” he mumbles against her skin, “When I said that I would choose you. I meant it. This,” he gestures at their marks, twin patterns pressed into their ribs, “Doesn’t change that. I still choose you, irregardless of fate or the universe or whatever bullshit is out there. Ten times over, a hundred times over, I’ll choose you.”

Clarke makes a drowsy, content sound and snuggles further into his side. “Bellamy Blake, you’re such a romantic,” she teases.

“I’m being serious,” he gripes though he knows that she can still feel the way his lips tip up at the edges. “I love you. And I’d love you with or without that mark on your chest. But…”

“But,” she prompts, propping herself up on her side so that she could watch his face. Her hair tumbles down over her shoulders in a cascade of gold and he finds himself entranced by it.

Bellamy leans over and brushes it behind her ear. “But I’m glad it’s you,” he finishes, fingers skimming across her cheek, almost unbearably soft, and she grins at him.

Clarke ducks her head, noses bumping into one another and eyelashes tickling at skin. “I love you too,” she tells him, twisting her fingers in his unruly hair.

For once that perpetual ache in his chest is quieted, no longer a painful reminder of what he can’t have, but instead it melts and turns into something golden and soft and warm. The flowers no longer feel like they’re cracking his ribs and fighting to get out, a pain he’s spent over a decade learning to ignore, learning to live with. 

Now it’s a quiet, steady bloom, filling him up with joy.

He tastes it too, in her mouth when he kisses her. Joy and love and everything that’s good in this life.

“I’m glad it’s you too,” she whispers to him when they pull apart, her lips brushing against his collarbone and sending sparks skittering down his spine. “So glad that it’s you.”

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on [tumblr](http://hiddenpolkadots.tumblr.com/) or, thanks to meg, [twitter](https://twitter.com/twlghtstrgzgmt)


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